Tag Archive for: museum of design atlanta

MUSEUM OF DESIGN ATLANTA ANNOUNCES CLOSE TO THE EDGE: THE BIRTH OF HIP-HOP ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITION TO OPEN SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15

Posted by Liz and John Attaway, 10/9/22

Exhibition Shows the Work of 34 Pioneers – Students, Academics & Practitioners—at the Center of the Emerging Architectural Revolution

On View Through Sunday, January 29, 2023 

Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) – the only museum in the Southeast devoted exclusively to the study and celebration of all things design – announces Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture will open Saturday, October 15 and be on view through Sunday, January 29, 2023 at the Midtown museum. An opening celebration with drinks, light bites, beats from DJ Jazzy T and a performance by Soul Food Cypher will take place on Friday, October 14 from 7-9pm and is open to the public. Registration for the opening party is here, and tickets to view the exhibition beginning October 15 will be available for purchase at the museum and in advance here.

Hip-Hop, the dominant cultural movement of our time, was established by the Black and Latino youth of New York’s South Bronx neighborhood in the early 1970s. Over the last five decades, hip-hop’s primary means of expression—deejaying, emceeing, b-boying and graffiti—have become globally recognized creative practices in their own right, and each has significantly impacted the urban built environment.

Hip-Hop Architecture is a design movement that embodies the collective creative energies native to young denizens of urban neighborhoods. Its designers produce spaces, buildings and environments that translate hip-hop’s energy and spirit into built form. Now three decades in the making, Hip-Hop Architecture is finally receiving widespread attention within the discipline of architecture thanks to years of dedication to its principles by practitioners such as Sara Zewde, Ujijji Davis, James Garrett Jr., Craig L. Wilkins and this show’s curator, Sekou Cooke. During this period of emergence, the movement’s ideals have primarily been tested by a small group of pioneering individuals, each using hip-hop as a lens through which to provoke and evoke architectural form. Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture exhibits the work of these pioneers—students, academics and practitioners—at the center of this emerging architectural revolution. 

The exhibition includes work by 34 participants representing seven countries, with projects ranging across a variety of media and forms of expression: from experimental visualization formats and installation strategies, to façade studies, building designs and urban development proposals. In aggregate, these projects reveal a collective vision for alternative forms of expression and practice, and serve to formalize work created over the past 30 years into an emerging canon of Hip-Hop Architecture.

The work exhibited is identified using three primary characteristics: hip-hop identity, hip-hop process and hip-hop image. The first includes authors who self-identify with the hip-hop community; the second invokes a method of production using specific hip-hop techniques or values; and the third creates products recognizable as part of an established hip-hop aesthetic. A new element of the exhibition added for the Museum of Design Atlanta, 3D Turntables, is an interactive exploration of the relationship between hip-hop technology and architectural fabrication.

Projects featured in the exhibition include:

  • Work from There Are No Blank Sheets of Paper by Amanda Williams, in which she questions how violence informs the use, appropriation and design of urban spaces
  • Shanty Megastructures, a 2015 speculative and Afrofuturist architectural intervention imagined for Lagos, Nigeria by Olalekan Jeyifous
  • Lauren Halsey’s 2018 Crenshaw District Hieroglyphic Project, a monument to South Central Los Angeles’s communities

“I’m very excited to bring this show to Atlanta after its three previous stops in New York, Saint Paul and Charlotte,” says Curator Sekou Cooke. “This city is the home of iconic Modernist and contemporary works of architecture as well as the home of ‘Dirty South’ artists like Outkast and Goodie Mob. I’m also thrilled to once again be working with a local graffiti artist, POEST, on this occasion and have involvement from local performing artists during other museum-hosted programming.”

RELATED PROGRAMS:

Alongside the exhibition, MODA will host virtual and in-person events related to Hip-Hop Architecture. Additional programs will be announced on MODA’s event calendar here throughout the exhibition.

Exhibition Opening

Fri., Oct. 14, 7-9pm

1315 Peachtree Street Atlanta, Georgia 30309

An opening celebration with drinks, light bites, beats from DJ Jazzy T and a performance by Soul Food Cypher will take place on Friday, October 14 from 7-9pm and is open to the public. Registration for the opening party is here.

Hip-Hop Culture in Ghana: A Conversation with Essé Dabla-Attikpo 

Wed., Nov. 2, 6-8pm

1315 Peachtree Street Atlanta, Georgia 30309

Join MODA, Atlanta Sustainable Fashion Week and Villa Albertine ATL at the museum for a conversation with Essé Dabla-Attikpo about hip-hop culture in Ghana. A current resident at Villa Albertine ATL and an independent curator and art consultant based in Ghana, Esse is studying the intersection between hip-hop and contemporary art and researching representations of Blackness in hip-hop culture by Black visual artists. Tickets can be purchased here.

Hip-Hop Bricks & Brew with Most Incredible 

Sat., Oct. 15, 7-9pm

1315 Peachtree Street Atlanta, Georgia 30309

MODA and Most Incredible are teaming up to host a fun evening to celebrate the museum’s new exhibition. Attendees will be able to socialize while building hip-hop-inspired creations with LEGO and sipping local beer from Second Self Beer Co.

SPONSORS:

The exhibition at MODA is made possible thanks to sponsors including the National Endowment for the Arts, AEC Trust, Spacecraft International, the Graham Foundation, EYP: A Page Company, Interface | Flor, National Organization of Minority Architects and Primal Screen. This exhibition is supported in part by the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affair and the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.

PARTNERS:

Curator: Sekou Cooke

Exhibition Design: Sekou Cooke with graffiti by POEST

Design Assistant: Joseph Appiah

Curatorial Assistant: Mirra Goldfrad

FOOD BY DESIGN EVENT SERIES 2019

Posted by Liz and John Attaway, 5/1/19

PONCE CITY MARKET TEAMS UP WITH MUSEUM OF DESIGN ATLANTA TO PRESENT FOOD BY DESIGN EVENT SERIES

Series Will Feature Talks with Leading Designers, Local Chefs & Farmers & Cover Food, Design, Urban Agriculture & More

Atlanta’s iconic Ponce City Market is collaborating with Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) to present Food by Design, an upcoming series of events and panel discussions covering food, urban agriculture, design, culture and more.

Food by Design will be hosted at The Plaza, Ponce City Market’s BeltLine-adjacent, glass structure. The free events will be open to the public, and all except the Dinner by Design conversation will coincide with the Ponce City Farmers Market held weekly on Tuesdays. Following Food by Design events, attendees are invited to peruse the market’s selection of locally grown produce, products from artisanal food makers and tastes from guest chefs.

Kicking off on Tuesday, May 14, the ongoing series will include:

Food for Thought: Innovation in Urban Agriculture – Tuesday, May 14 at 6pm
Join MODA and Ponce City Market for a discussion on the innovations in urban agriculture currently underway in Atlanta. Food for Thought will explore these efforts through the lens of design and innovation in order to understand how individuals and organizations are prototyping, testing and making the food system healthier, sustainable and more equitable. Upon arrival, guests can enjoy light bites, popsicles from King of Pops and complimentary “The Ivey League” cocktails made by Likewise’s Beverage Director Ben Richardson, who will incorporate local honey from three newly installed beehives at Ponce City Market. Following, Food for Thought will feature a panel of urban agriculture innovators, including:

  • Mario Cambardella, the City of Atlanta’s first Urban Agriculture Director. During the event, he will talk about the innovative projects underway by the City of Atlanta.
  • John Gordon from Friends of English Avenue Urban Farm, an urban farm on English Avenue that offers 100 percent of its food proceeds to English Avenue residents through a food co-op.
  • Nuri Icgoren, Founder of Urban Sprouts Farm, a formerly foreclosed property that’s now a flourishing farm and becoming home to an urban agricultural hub that serves as an entrepreneurial incubator for food and farming enterprises.
  • Kim Karris, Executive Director of Food Well Alliance, the organization that co-founded the Food Innovation Network for entrepreneurs, educators and community organizers using food as a transformational tool in collaboration with the Center for Civic Innovation.
  • Abiodun Henderson, Founder of the Gangstas to Growers, a program focused on empowering formerly incarcerated and at-risk youth through agriculture, employment and entrepreneurship.

Please see here to register and learn more.

Dinner by Design: A Discussion About Restaurant Design – Saturday, June 1 at 2pm
Held in conjunction with Atlanta Design Festival, Ponce City Market and MODA are bringing together some of the city’s top restaurant designers for a rapid-fire discussion on June 1 at The Plaza at Ponce City Market. Moderated by Doug Henderson, Co-owner of Switch Modern, the event will feature panelists from some of Atlanta’s leading restaurant design firms, who will talk about the role of design in creating an environment that enables and enhances the dining experience. Panelists will include John Bencich of Square Feet Studio, Smith Hanes of Smith Hanes Studio, Dan Maas of ai3, Skylar Morgan of Skylar Morgan Furniture + Design and Tim Nichols of NO Architecture.

After the discussion, attendees will be invited to visit restaurants designed by panelists and housed within Ponce City Market’s Central Food Hall. Please see here to register and learn more.

Talk With Your Mouth Full: Poetry & Stories About Food – September 10 at 6pm
MODA and Ponce City Market are teaming up with Ryan J and Nate Mask, the award-winning, spoken-word artists who tour as “Nobody Likes Us, But We’re Here Anyway,” to curate a food-focused poetry slam and storytelling session. The event will highlight Atlanta poets and storytellers, and feature an open-mic portion, inviting guests to share their stories about food. Nobody Likes Us, But We’re Here Anyway have performed in over 45 cities from coast to coast. In 2018, Ryan and Nate were members of the National Poetry Slam Group Piece Champion Art Amok Slam Team, and both are members of the Art Amok and Java Slam teams. Please see here to register and learn more.

Later this year, MODA and Ponce City Market will host a special Food by Design supper club, where guests can enjoy a seated dinner and discussion highlighting diversity and inclusion in Atlanta’s food scene. Additional details to be announced.

For more information about the upcoming Food by Design series, please visit www.museumofdesign.org.