40/400

Your work can be submitted as a .pdf, .jpg, .mov, .mp3 or url. Register for the competition at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/4... Email your file or link to [email protected]. There is no set file size or guidelines for dimensions. This is Hip Hop. We want everyone, ourselves included, to be free. Read the "40/400" call below, share your plan and let's work. 

40/400 CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Sustainability that adopts families as natural resources, particularly as entrepreneurs, has represented the hallmark of micro business: mom-and-pop farmers, town economies, and micro-tech co-work, most recently. The adaptability of technology, meets the demand of sustainable industry. It mimics the ebb and flow of social tides. The crisis of both post-industrialization and the prison-industrial complex is that urban planning has literally farmed out the labored body, crippling under-100,000 cities most certainly, and impoverished urban areas in general.

The only disparity between the South Bronx and Trenton, New Jersey, if we consider two areas where Oil House has worked, is that the former is planned against the backdrop of cosmopolitanism. Trenton carries a greater stigma. Both sites have a tense negotiation at play with gentrification. Water, as one sustainable resource, is seen in both sites as a “middle passage” for Waterfront tourism and market- rate housing. The local, with respect to labor and industry, is a regional phenomenon. The shift from urban to neighborhood planning may better facilitate local transportation and residential development; however, stronger business networks are not as well facilitated by local governments, which have for too long been the driving force behind planning. Businesses cooperate better across regions than governments, particularly when it’s cost effective. 

On January 10, 2018, Oil House has been invited by Just Leadership USA to submit a proposal for adaptive reuse for Rikers Island. The campaign to #closerikers has been championed by their organization up to this point, without any internal effort to propose solutions for what should be there in place of the notoriously brutal site of mass incarceration. Our proposed plan occupies exactly 40 acres, and roughly 1/101 of the Island. This architectural competition, 40/400, calls for 100 additional proposals to develop a co-work space. Our plan, (re)tire, has been reviewed in earlier iterations by R.V. PitTstop owners, Richard and Vivian Jones, and Richard Jones, Jr.; planner, Tanji Gilliam, PhD/MFA; and the White House My Brother’s Keeper Commission, for which Gilliam served as an invited stakeholder, and Jones, Jr. a registered mentor.

OUR JUDGES

Tanji Gilliam, PhD/MFA, Founder, Oil House 

Tanji Gilliam (1979-) owes more to the Center for Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania, than any other home she has ever lived in or visited. She was the recipient of the Leeway Art & Change Grant, and numerous awards and support from the Social Science Research Council for her postdoctoral and undergraduate work at Penn. She is the author of the strategic plan for The Universal Hip Hop Museum which has recently partnered with New York City Economic Development Corporation to develop new construction on the Bronx Waterfront. Gilliam also wrote the new market tax credit application for Liberty Realty/The Old Bronx County Courthouse which is under contract to lease to a Success Academy charter school. Gilliam’s doctoral work was centered on race and archives, and was advised by Melissa Harris-Perry. Also, while in residence at University of Chicago, Gilliam served as the Hip-Hop and Media researcher for The Black Youth Project. In 2007, Gilliam founded Oil House Productions. Oil House’s films have been featured in The Cannes Film Festival, International Film Festival, Rotterdam and in The Huffington Post. Gilliam’s prose has been edited alongside Imani Perry, PhD and Suheir Hammad.

She is the mother of two sons, and a baby girl, Clarke Harper. 

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Julien Albertini, Asthetíque

Julien’s design style is inspired by the environments that surround each project.  He believes that a space should embody the sentiments of its environment by exciting and soothing the senses while remaining accessible and functional. Guided by the harmony found in nature, Julien gives balance to each project he works on.  Julien began his career within the  design industry at the early age of 16 working as a college intern with a distinguished New York based architectural firm. Emboldened and fortified by his early experience, Julien opened his first design practice named Crossline Concepts (CC) at the age of 17. CC is where Julien first adopted his integrative business model, by offering various levels of design services. The services ranged from interior design and industrial design to web and graphic design. Julien closed CC in 2013 to launch a full design-build firm named Albertini and Nelson (AN). AN designed and built over $30 million worth of projects over the span of 3 years. Their most notable works ranged from interior design for brands like Calvin Klein and IZOD to full scale ground-up construction of hotels and multifamily developments. After a 3 year run, Albertini and Nelson brought in a a talented new design partner named Alina Pimkina  and changed the company name to Asthetíque.  Asthetíque is now a multifaceted international design firm that harnesses its innate creativity and intuition to achieve distinguished works of art throughout various industries. With an office in New York City and Moscow, Asthetíque designs can be experienced on a global level. Nonetheless, Julien believed that the need for design is evident and the visionaries that execute on the numerous principals needed to complete an assignment are those who continue to benchmark for future advancements. And this is how Julien now leads Asthetíque’s architectural design and construction division. 

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Paradise Gray

Hip-hop Legend, Architect of X Clan, Manager of The Latin Quarter, DJ, writer, author of No Half Steppin': An Oral and Pictorial History of New York City Club the Latin Quarter and the Birth of Hip-Hop's Golden Era, producer, promoter, film maker, keynote speaker and artist. Mentor to Jasiri X and hundreds of Legendary Hip-hop Artists. Curator of "The Paradise Collection" Hip-hop history, photos and memorabilia collection.

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Nakia Thomas, Founding Editor, Stylechile.com

"It’s unclear why I began, at an early age in Jamaica, to use fashion to live out my fantasies. Maybe it started as a rebellion against my elementary school uniform and the school’s otherwise rigid dress code—I had an eye for storytelling, for getting into character and for communicating vividly, and my uniform did nothing to further my creativity. Back then, it was not uncommon to find me reciting stories to visiting family, while using my mother’s high heels and lipsticks as props; or for me to show up, dressed for a family outing, in a creative outfit of my own choosing—resolutely resisting all suggestions to change.

Even then, I realized that fashion is transformative; and that thoughtful styling could more closely align the reality of life with my extraordinary fantasies—vivid imaginings accompanied by elaborate story telling, featuring well-dressed characters in highly stylized settings.Later, growing up in the Bronx confirmed my belief in fashion as a change agent. During that time I used fashion to facilitate my transformation into what I perceived it was to be an American; I learned the names of brands that represented Americana and saved up for Levi’s, Frye, Ralph Lauren, Reebok and Tommy Hilfiger.

During that period I was also persuaded that one cannot live on dreams and fashion alone, and so I began the journey down a practical career path with its prerequisite education. It wasn’t until after college that I started StyleChile, a first generation fashion blog—right around the time when my dream to work as a magazine editor was fighting a losing battle against my plans to become a lawyer. Later, after law school and with the support of an emerging fashion blogging community, I began to integrate two competing interests: a preoccupation with fashion and a career as a corporate lawyer. Insert poignant saying about serving two masters here.

Today, I’m moving forward in the direction that I intuited as a child: still indulging in fanciful dreams, still using fashion to transform those fantasies into reality and still telling stories along the way. This third iteration of my blog is for the lovers of fashion, the dreamers and me; and for those women who inspire me every day—whose words of encouragement, enduring support and positive energy embolden me to go confidently in the direction of my dreams, to live the life I’ve always imagined!"

Nakia works as a corporate lawyer for a Fortune 500 company, and as a fashion and lifestyle consultant — providing styling, lifestyle management and concierge services for brands and individuals along the Northeast Corridor, from her home base in New York City via Nakia Thomas Creative. Nakia also provides legal and advisory services to clients in the fashion, art and entertainment industries via Stelle Legal, and appears in that capacity as a cast member in WeTv’s Money.Power.Respect., a docu-series focusing on lawyers in New York City. Nakia is a member of the Board of Directors of Bronx Legal Services, and was previously on an Advisory Board for Moore College of Art & Design. Visit www.nakiapthomas.com for more information about Nakia and her services.

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DJ Fatha Ramzee

#TheBlendBully                                                                                                                

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Maya Baroody, BFA

Maya Baroody (1995-) was born and raised in the Hyde Park neighborhood of the south side of Chicago to Lebanese immigrant parents. She graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Photography & Imaging. During her time in college, Baroody creatively explored her identity as an Arab/American woman within the context of New York City, as well as in Lebanon and the greater Arab world. In addition, after studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Baroody fell in love with the Latin language and culture—as she found it very similar to her own—and has been pursuing Latin American Studies ever since. In her final year at NYU she was introduced to the concept of a global Afro-Arab political imaginary, something she had been waiting her whole life to discover, and feels that this is an area of study she wants pursue infinitely into her future.

Baroody has written and worked for publications such as The Fader and Hype Magazine South Africa. She has also had the opportunity to work with legendary hip hop contributors DJ Semtex as well as photographer Jonathan Mannion. 

Beyond photography and journalism, Baroody spends much of her time pursuing music as a singer, songwriter and poet in the jazz/rhythm & blues genre. She hopes to professionally record her own records in the near future and entertain in the industry under the alias Mayoush, a Lebanese nickname given to her when she was young.