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Join New City Critics and BlackSpace for an “Open Classroom” with Jerald “Coop” Cooper of Hood Century.

Criticism of the built environment today comes in all forms. The project of Hood Century highlights the unique designs of mid-century and overlooked architecture in Black neighborhoods across America using Instagram, rent parties, and exhibitions to reach new audiences. Last spring, for several months, Hood Century’s founder, Jerald “Coop” Cooper, trained his eye on New York City. 

Join us for an “Open Classroom” with Hood Century — part conversation, part trivia, part celebration — in the amphitheater of Abrons Arts Center whose architect, Lo Yi Chen, envisioned a radically open public forum in the heart of the Lower East Side. This event is co-hosted with New City Critics alumnus BlackSpace Urbanist Collective Inc.

Guest & Accessibility Policies 

Urban Design Forum promotes conversations between invited civic leaders, designers, developers, and advocates. This event is open to all.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals to engage fully. Please review the following policies:

• This event will have microphones and speakers.
• The venue will have an entrance and elevators that are ADA-accessible.
• If you’re not feeling well, please stay home.
• Please refrain from wearing strong fragrances to accommodate guests with allergies or environmental sensitivities.
• For additional access requests or questions, please contact rsvp@urbandesignforum.org.
  

About New City Critics

New City Critics is a fellowship program that empowers new, fearless, and diverse voices to challenge the ways we understand, design, and develop our cities. The fellowship supports the development of five critics from underrepresented backgrounds through guest lectures and workshops, research guidance, mentorship opportunities, networking, and production of new critical projects in Urban Omnibus and other leading publications. Through public programs and other channels, the fellowship encourages a more expansive conversation on the future of cities. New City Critics is a joint project of Urban Omnibus/The Architectural League of New York and Urban Design Forum.

About Hood Century

Jerald Cooper’s Hood Century reframes Black vernacular architecture as a living archive of design, memory, and social rhythm. Beginning as the Instagram account @hoodmidcenturymodern, Cooper’s platform has grown into a movement of aesthetic recognition and cultural preservation. Drawing from historic and current Black American neighborhoods, Hood Century examines how Black communities shape, preserve, and reinterpret mid-century design. It defines Black modernism as a spatial logic, one that is inherited, modified, or radically reinterpreted through the particulars and variants of Black American life. Using pop-cultural juxtaposition and sensory engagement, Hood Century shifts perception: making the overlooked visible and the local monumental. Preservation becomes participatory and embodied, an act of care that merges personal memory with civic vision.

About BlackSpace Collective

BlackSpace Urbanist Collective (BlackSpace) is a national 501(c)3 that strengthens equitable distribution of resources and power in community-based projects. Through our collective work, BlackSpace inspires and influences thousands of people in the design fields to enact individual, community-based, and systemic change. 

Over the past decade, BlackSpace has evolved from hyperlocal gatherings of changemakers in Brooklyn, NY into a national force in direct engagement of over 6,000 people in liberatory design and urban planning practice. We created the BlackSpace Manifesto, a vision for incorporating liberation principles into public projects and urban design. That Manifesto has now reached over 22 million people, sparking conversations about liberated space far beyond Brooklyn. We’ve completed physical transformation projects – community centers, gardens, cultural spaces – and have invested more than $3 million directly into neighborhood projects that push boundaries and towards liberation. Along the way, we’ve built a network of over 90 urbanist organizers, one third of whom have invested in building their own studios in service of liberated public spaces and launched our newest urbanist accelerator program, Kinfolk Imagining Neighborhoods (Studio KIN).

Support Our Work

New City Critics was launched through the founding support of Joan Copjec, in honor of Michael Sorkin. The 2025–2026 fellowship is made possible through the lead support of the Mellon Foundation, with additional support from Critical Minded, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Carol and Mark Willis, LEVENBETTS, Cathleen McGuigan and David Berridge, Nat Oppenheimer, Karen Stein, Calvin Tsao, and Siqi Zhu.

We are also grateful to the founding donors of the program: Stella Betts, Joan Copjec, Vincent Chang, Critical Minded, Rosalie Genevro, Mario Gooden, Paul Goldberger, Graham Foundation, Tami Hausman, Mary Margaret Jones, Astrid Lipka & Lyn Rice, Thom Mayne, Zach Mortice & Maria Speiser, Eric Owen Moss, Nat Oppenheimer, Charles H. Revson Foundation, Moshe Safdie, Karen Stein, Calvin Tsao, Mark Willis & Carol Willis, and Siqi Zhu.

Urban Design Forum programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

To learn more about supporting New City Critics, please contact Daniel McPhee, daniel@urbandesignforum.org.

Image Credit: @hoodmidcenturymodern