Former Syracuse Architecture faculty member Sekou Cooke, currently Director of the Master of Urban Design program at UNC Charlotte, will lead a panel discussion in the Everson’s Hosmer Auditorium that includes Dean Michael Speaks and current Syracuse Architecture studio professor, Nathan Williams.
They will discuss the themes within Professor Cooke’s exhibition as it relates to local events and the role of the architect in facilitating and creating frameworks for others to visualize their own environments.
15-81
15-81 presents architect and urban designer Sekou Cooke’s project We Outchea: Hip-Hop Fabrications and Public Space alongside documents relating to the 15th Ward in Syracuse, New York.
Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in 2021 as part of their exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, We Outchea focuses on the legacy of placement and displacement of Black residents in Syracuse and considers various events in the city’s history—the razing of the historic 15th Ward, the building of multiple public housing projects, and the construction of Interstate-81—while simultaneously critiquing recent proposals to replace low-income communities with mixed-income housing.
By contextualizing the We Outchea project with photographs and ephemera that tell the story of the once vibrant 15th Ward, Cooke points to a post I-81 Syracuse future of entrepreneurship and innovation.
To learn more, visit everson.org/sekou.
Syracuse University School of Architecture is a presenting sponsor.
