AZI THE DZNR

I wasn’t born into design, I was born into a story.
Detroit’s East Side, 48205.
Where the pavement cracked but the people didn’t.
A father with magic in his pencil.
A mother with math in her bones.
That’s how I became an architectural designer part sketch, part solution.
A blueprint shaped by block parties and boarded windows.

At Cass Tech, the spark caught.
At Detroit Mercy, it turned to fire.
But even in the studio, I noticed
the drawings didn’t speak our slang,
the models didn’t hold our memory,
the buildings didn’t look like us.

So I became AZI the DZNR.

Not just a name, a reclamation.
I design with culture as concrete.
From the stories stitched into sidewalks,
to reimagining homes as hubs of history.
I don’t separate design from community
I layer them, remix them, make them sing.

My architecture isn’t built for the ribbon-cutting.
It’s built for what comes after.
Will it still hold love? Still serve purpose?
Built to honor the ones who held it down all along?

Like Virgil Abloh, I don’t wear “designer” the way they do.
Because we were never the blueprint
so I drafted a new one
our rhythm, our roots, our rise.

Ten years from now, my work will still speak.
Not just in steel or stone
but in something deeper.
Something called belonging.