Roy Kinsey Rehearsing A Westside Story: Legacy Project

Roy Kinsey is an anomaly when it comes to tradition in his respective industries. Roy Kinsey is a black, queer-identified, rapper and librarian. Kinsey’s non-conformist ideology has informed his sixth album, KINSEY: A Memoir, which he proclaims as his best work yet. Following the still-poignant Blackie: A Story by Roy Kinsey, KINSEY: A Memoir, captures a sinister yet sincere and potent musical performance. In the album, Kinsey reflects on his early traumas that threatened to debilitate his belief in himself and his family’s abilities. It is the manifestation of a queer man, in a black body, coming of age in Chicago. Chicago-born and raised, Roy Kinsey is a librarian for Chicago Public Libraries.

Established in 2013, WOJR is a five-person organization of designers that works holistically across projects and research to practice architecture as a form of cultural production. Our work extends across the globe and engages the realms of art, architecture, and urbanism. Geographically located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, WOJR maintains an integral relationship with the local and larger academic communities in various ways: William is an Associate Professor at MIT, where he has taught for a decade, and numerous WOJR team members are affiliated with Harvard GSD and other area universities as instructors and visiting critics. WOJR has lectured and led design workshops at various academic institutions around the country and world, including recently being included in the Porto Academy in Portugal. In recent years, WOJR has received growing recognition, which has resulted in commissioned projects that span the United States, from New York to California, and extend abroad to works such as a full-scale pavilion for the 17th International Biennale Architettura in Venice, Italy. Working globally, WOJR has become accustomed to the rewards involved in working with skilled and passionate collaborators from different parts of the world to create projects that are unique and responsive to their varied budgetary, cultural, and geographical contexts.