Ryan Coogler | Marvel Studios, 2018 | Watch
As a model of a world free of the history of colonialism, Black Panther's Wakanda thrives on social, technological, and economic resources benefitted by all — illustrating the power of an Afrofuturist lens in visualizing cities of the future. In Wakanda, urban design is an amalgamation of the old and the new, the public and the private; where individuals have the freedom to define their own histories and relations to time and space. Images of the grassroots urbanism of Wakanda’s self-built houses and markets help us envision a future of freedom and agency for black people — America's largest urban population that has consistently been oppressed by design steeped in traditions of white supremacy.
Bryan Forbes | Palomar Pictures International, 1975 | Watch
The suburbs are largely a creation of an explicit, policy-driven, subsidized scheme that has guided how we live, work and play. Both The Stepford Wives and Jordan Peele's 2017 film Get Out, while made decades apart, help us trace and visualize the eerie stasis of the idea of an achievable "American Dream" in suburban life — where, instead, individualism, equality and progressivism are swept under the rug by the collective illusion of safety and support. David Byrne | Hudson Theatre, 2019 | Watch
It’s no surprise David Byrne is a fan of parentheticals, a grammar tool invented to share further details and instructions for larger generalizations. Featuring some of the Talking Head's greatest hits, like "This Must be the Place (Naïve Melody)" and "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)", American Utopia shares lessons of the power of human connection even in the most aimless and uncertain of journeys. In American Utopia, Byrne is still a lovable urbanite full of questions, but in a new light; carving up words of enlightenment and optimism in teaching us that there can be a better future ahead — it's just up to us.
Kevin Lynch | The MIT Press, 1960 | Book
Long before GPS and Instagram, Lynch imagined how urbanites explore and remember their city. His lessons on "imageability", a process through which individuals engage in urban way-finding to create mental maps of spaces, lends extra responsibility to the urban architect as a memory-maker. It is also of course an incredibly valuable resource in trying to understand the subjective nature of urban navigability — a tool ahead of its time for architects building for accessibility and sustainability for all futures.
Michael Sorkin | Hill and Wang, 1992 | Book
In this book, Sorkin brilliantly illustrates the perils of embracing the wrong kind of urbanism — one that embraces the sterile uniformity and forced, structured social interactivity of the suburbs. The importance of designing room for serendipity in the urban space cannot be stressed enough and Sorkin's book stands testament to bringing together great minds in both defining and advocating for the move away from dystopian artificial urban design.
Janette Sadik-Kahn and Seth Solomonow | Penguin Books, 2016 | Book
It is imperative that cities embrace walking, biking and bus travel as the preferred (if not only) methods of transportation in order to create a sustainable, healthy and happy future for all species. In doing so, we must reimagine and redesign the "source codes" of our streets — a lesson wonderfully illustrated in this book by the former commissioner of NYC’s Department of Transportation. Streetfight teaches us that this sort of urban future is possible, even in the densest American metropolis.
Henri Lefebvre | Wiley-Blackwell, 1974 | Book
A stark critic of consumerism and the alienation of everyday modern life, Lefebvre is interested in creating spaces that are in dialogue with our imaginations. In The Production of Space, the public is the personal and the political, and there is no lack of emphasis on the power of shared space. In 2017, my firm drafted a letter on the need for more public spaces of free expression and demonstration to NYC mayor Bill DeBlasio and this work was certainly an influence in moving into this type of advocacy work.