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Is Kanye West’s first architecture project an affordable concrete prefab?

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Teasers are out

Rapper Kanye West performs at the Forum on October 25, 2016 in Inglewood, California.
The architecture of a Kanye West show.
Getty Images

UPDATE: On June 4, designer Jalil Peraza, who previously worked with West’s design company Donda, posted two images on Instagram depicting, per the captions, “Low income housing scheme, made of prefabricated concrete in collaboration with Petra Kustrin, Jalil Peraza, Kanye West, Nejc Skufca.” Is this the first glimpse of Yeezy Home? Quite possibly! It’s certainly the kind of concrete-worshipping scheme we were expecting.

In May, rapper and fashion designer Kanye West took to Twitter to announce that he’s launching an architecture venture within his company Yeezy, taking a note from the playbook of Elon Musk, who loves to introduce new projects on social media (and, coincidentally, also just tweeted that he’s starting a candy company).

Per the tweet, embedded below, West is seeking architects and industrial designers who “want to make the world better.” This 146-character communiqué is just one drop in a sea of eyebrow-raising tweets from the rapper lately, but if we’re being honest, it is perhaps the least shocking of the bunch.

West has demonstrated a long-time interest in architecture. In 2013, he visited the Harvard Graduate School of Design, stood on a studio desk, and articulated sentiments like “I really do believe that the world can be saved through design, and everything needs to actually be ‘architected.’”

His concerts have certainly been architected. West previously worked with now-disbanded design firm Family New York on a “traveling mountain and LED sun” for his North American Yeezus tour.

West also seems to have a penchant for Brutalism—the heavy-handed, much-contested architectural style that architects love to defend. A feature on PIN-UP recently offered an look inside the Yeezy studio, an all-concrete-everything kind of space in a ’70s office building in Calabasas, California. And let’s not forget his $110,000 Le Corbusier concrete lamp, which he once called his “greatest inspiration.”

Plus—Virgil Abloh, West’s architecture-trained collaborator, has been developing a line with Ikea. The rapper may just be itching to make his own mark in the home world.

What will Yeezy Home look like? Stay tuned (but we’re betting on some concrete).