sekou cooke STUDIO

sekou cooke STUDIO | Syracuse Hip-Hop Headquarters (SHHHQ), Syracuse, NY, in progress. Image courtesy sekou cooke STUDIO

The Architectural League’s annual Emerging Voices program spotlights North American architects, landscape architects, and urban designers who have significant bodies of realized work and the potential to influence their field.

sekou cooke STUDIO is a 2022 Emerging Voice.

sekou cooke STUDIO is an architecture and urban design practice founded in 2008. In its own words, the studio is “centered on the exploration of Hip-Hop Architecture, an approach to contemporary design that embraces hip-hop culture and applies its shape, structure, and ideologies to the built environment.” The studio’s work includes public, nonprofit, and residential projects, as well as temporary installations and speculative designs.

Projects include:

Sekou Cooke holds a BArch from Cornell University and an MArch from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He is the director of the Master of Urban Design program at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the 2021/2022 Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, and a founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective.

sekou cooke STUDIO has received multiple awards and recognitions, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Graham Foundation, as well as an honorable mention in the faculty design category from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. The studio was selected as a contributor to the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Projects