![]() ![]() Space.”Īt one point, West refers to the domes he and his team are developing in Cody as “V.2.” The first tests-the V.1 domes-were erected out of temporary plywood last year on a 300-acre parcel in Calabasas. “What does all this stuff mean for our mental health? How different would we be if we were in spaces where we could actually think and focus and be clear?” The next day, while sitting in his personal cabin, West will tell me, “I’m trying out a different cure than medication. “Kanye talks a lot about how our spaces are so cluttered,” Walters continues. ![]() Walters and Alqadi are carrying the morning’s drawings on printouts and tracing paper. He and Malek Alqadi, another Yeezy architect, have just arrived at the ranch from the office in downtown Cody, where West has bought just under 12 acres of commercial property and is developing a Yeezy factory for his sneaker partnership with Adidas, which reportedly did around $1.5 billion in revenue in 2019 alone. “There’s a big sustainability aspect,” Walters says of the entire project. “A circular 100,000-person amphitheater.” The Yeezy Season 8 clothes that he recently showed in Paris, meanwhile, are “servicewear” garments intended to be worn by the eventual Yeezy campus staff-cooks, nannies, housekeepers, etc. “We see 100,000 students singing these compositions,” West tells me. The majority of the drawings that I see during my time with West largely focus on massive single-family dome dwellings, although he is also developing a multifamily version-a retreat center, if you will, which will bring guests to West Lake Ranch to experience life inside the domes as well as performances by the Sunday Service Choir. Once West is satisfied with the new architectural language he is establishing, the design can be modulated and built anywhere-but the first completed dome will almost surely be built in Cody or Calabasas. From there, West began to conceptualize a new kind of totally sustainable dome-shaped dwelling, complete with massive podlike rooms within the larger dome, the notable absence of corners and stairs, and an oculus open to the sky. In 2016, before that project finished, West encountered the work of Turrell and had an epiphany: “We need to build a home,” he remembers saying, “where every room is a Turrell.” Which eventually took him to the artist’s epic land-art masterpiece in the cone of an extinct volcano near Flagstaff, Arizona, called Roden Crater. ![]() “When he’s not here, it’s constant text messages, sending sketches, a lot of phone calls back and forth.”Īs best I can tell, this global starchitect-level creative exchange evolved out of Kanye’s total overhaul with Silvestrin of his New York City apartment (completed in 2007), as well as his five-year collaboration with Vervoordt on the recently completed Kardashian-West family home in Hidden Hills. “Whenever he’s in Cody, he’s in the office several times a day, always checking in,” says a staff architect named Zach Walters. The three frequently share ideas, notes, and drawings with the Yeezy team, which are then worked over under the direction of West himself. Over the course of our conversations, Kanye refers to West Lake Ranch as a “Yeezy campus” and “a paradigm shift for humanity.” He is focused on developing a new architectural language with input from the legendary American light-and-space artist James Turrell, the Belgian interior design wizard Axel Vervoordt, and the Italian architect Claudio Silvestrin. ![]() But more than that, Kanye West is developing his boldest endeavors yet-and this is his test site.īy the time you read this, whatever state the plans were in when I was on the ranch in January has surely morphed. So: Is it a ranch where he will raise the sheep that will produce the wool for Yeezy clothing, as has been reported? Yes, sure, that’s a tiny part of it. “And definitely Christ altered my ego.” The choir, the rebirth, the multi-thousand-acre land grabs, the move to Wyoming, the new Jesus-centric rap album, the return to Fashion Week in Paris… Where is it all coming from? And what does it all add up to? By a combination of instinct and design, West’s projects are always moving targets, but what became clear as we spent time together is that, in many ways, they are all linked to what is going on here in Cody. “I definitely think there’s an alter ego,” West tells me. Which is exactly what makes him so fascinating right now. In fact, since West has become publicly active again after the prolonged quiet period that followed his 2016 hospitalization at UCLA Medical Center for what was deemed a “psychiatric emergency” (a moment of adversity that, like an infamous car crash early in his career, West conceptualizes as pivotal), the correlation between all of his wide-ranging endeavors has been mysterious. The exact nature of the project they are toiling over is ever evolving. ![]()
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