Design Statement I was assigned to design the “Hip- Hop Hall of Fame”. It is a museum and job training center in Mount Vernon, NY. The chosen location for this project is an abandoned firehouse located at 211 South Fourth Avenue, and of approximately 20,000 sq. feet. This facility should include (A)a museum area of approximately 1000 sq. feet to serve as changing/ permanent exhibition of hip-hop history and culture/ artistic related fields, (B) a job training center for youth, including three computer rooms, and one lecture room, (C) a gift-shop that may offer a working position for youth, and (D) offices to accommodate the working personnel for this facility. My design concept interprets hip-hop music, and by that I mean converting rhythm and lyrics into three-dimensional shapes that will express the idea behind this trend of music. By examining the sound and the words of hip-hop, I found that the rhythm is the environment in which the words come to life. The lyrics express the anger or depression or any kind of rebellion that the hip-hoppers feel against society and authority. This idea is not new, and has been used before in other styles of music. With this in mind, I realized that in this project I should use old materials to express new ideas. After all, music was not invented yesterday. The choice of copper and wood gave me not just the history aspect of my beliefs it also allowed me to create a warm caring environment that I thought was necessary for urban youths who are always looking for a feeling of belonging. I was looking for an environment to work in that would create the rhythm and the words. When you listen to this music you have the feeling that the sound is taking you back and fourth and creating an illusion of a zigzag line. As a designer, I pursued perfection: the straight line. And if you intersect that line with a zigzag line you create a three-angle shape, which is a good representation of rebellion. The triangle shapes are repeated throughout the building. I used the circle to express the momentum of rhythm, which is a constantly repeating line segment. Now, all I had to do was to stretch it with an angle in order to get the shape of an egg that represents the strong roots upon which this music is based. When you come through the doors of the hall of fame, you interact with a wall that takes you from the roof-line to almost eye level. This angled wall not only expresses rhythm, it is a statement too: stop looking for answers in the sky, create your own future, and now is the time. This modern wall is in contrast to the Romanesque façade creating an ongoing dialog between the old and the new, between the outside appearance and the inside reality. Architecturally, this solution echoes hip-hop’s attempt to cut through the hypocrisy they declare. As you ascend the different levels, the inside modern wall is trying to unite with the outside world, which represents the ongoing struggle for success and recognition by the struggling artists and singers.