Master of Urban Design Director Sekou Cooke’s studio has been named a 2022 Emerging Voice by the Architectural League of New York, an annual juried award that recognizes North American individuals and firms “with distinct design voices that have the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design,” the announcement states. Sekou Cooke STUDIO is one of eight award recipients this year.
Cooke founded his studio in 2008, and the design work the studio produces is focused 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,” he describes. The studio’s projects include public, nonprofit, and residential projects, as well as temporary installations and speculative designs.
Cooke’s internationally recognized research in the field of Hip-Hop Architecture has been widely disseminated through his writings, lectures, and symposia and is the subject of his monograph, Hip-Hop Architecture, which was published by Bloomsbury in April 2021. A related exhibition, Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture, which Cooke curated, will be on view March 14-July 15 in the Projective Eye Gallery at The DuBois Center at UNC Charlotte Center City.
In January, Cooke was one of 18 architects and designers nationally to be interviewed by Architect Magazine about hopes and fears for the design world in 2022.