Less than a year after Kanye West was forced to demolish his affordable housing prototypes in Calabasas, California, the rapper/designer/maybe-presidential-candidate has revealed that the project is still forging ahead.
On September 9, 2019, West pulled down the four timber structures he had established on his 300-acre property after being threatened with demolition by the Los Angeles County Public Works. The domes, sustainable housing prototypes modeled after the huts from Tatooine in the first Star Wars movie, were slightly sunken and all featured holes cut out at the top to let in natural light. Unfortunately, they also included concrete foundations, which drew the Public Works department’s ire, as it indicated they were more than temporary structures that West had failed to secure construction permits for. Combined with the construction noise complaints from neighbors, the department ordered the structures to be torn down on September 15; West took them down preemptively a week early.
Then, yesterday, July 5, West took to Twitter to show off the next iteration of the project.
YZY SHLTRS in process #2020VISION pic.twitter.com/dWGiYZIEJY
— ye (@kanyewest) July 5, 2020
“YZY SHLTRS in process #2020VISION,” wrote the rapper, debuting a picture of his housing prototypes at an unspecified location amid rolling hills. From the glimpse of the new under-construction structures, it appears the next version of his Yeezy Shelters will feature a more amorphous, possibly asymmetrical shape than the simple domes shown off before, although all still appear to be slightly sunken. It also seems West and his unnamed construction crew will be pouring concrete foundations for this batch of Yeezy Shelters as well—let’s hope he secured the proper permits this time.
The 2020VISION hashtag West (seemingly unrelatedly) appended to the preview corroborates with the presidential run he announced on July 4; however, as Forbes points out, West has missed a number of states’ filing deadlines and hasn’t registered with the Federal Election Commission, something required of even write-in candidates for president.
