Michael Sorkin

Michael Sorkin
Born	1948 Washington, DC
Nationality	American
Occupation	Architect
Practice	Michael Sorkin Studio

Michael Sorkin (born 1948, Washington, DC is an American architect, author, and educator based in New York City.

Life and career

Michael Sorkin is an architect and urbanist whose practice spans design, criticism and teaching. He received professional training in architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (M.Arch '74), and he also holds a master's degrees in English from Columbia University (MA '70). Sorkin is founding Principal of Michael Sorkin Studio, a New York-based global design practice with special interests in urban planning, urban design and green urbanism. He is also the founding president of Terreform, a non-profit dedicated to researching forms and practices of urbanism, co-president of educational and advocacy organization, the Institute for Urban Design, and vice- president of Urban Design Forum in N.Y. In 2013, he was awarded the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Design Mind award.

Urban Planning

Sorkin has been, for 30-years, principal of Michael Sorkin Studio in New York City focusing primarily in the urban public realm. In 2010, he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters award in architecture. He has designed environmental projects in Hamburg, Germany, as well as master planning studies for the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, the Brooklyn waterfront, and urban green space in Queens Plaza, New York. [ His urban studies have been the subject of gallery exhibits. An international consultant, Sorkin has served as a juror for the Guggenheim Helsinki competition, The Aga Khan Trust for Culture's the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and Chrysler Design Award, which he co-founded, as well as the the American Institute of Architecture NY, and the Architectural League of New York.

Urban Planning Projects

• 1994: Masterplan for Brooklyn Waterfront.
• 1998: alternative masterplan for the University of Chicago campus.
• 2001: Proposal for a large section of the Arverne Urban Renewal Area on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens.
• 2001: A Plan For Lower Manhattan.
• 2004: Penang Peaks project, Penang, Malaysia.
• 2005: Masterplan for New City, Chungcheong, South Korea.
• 2009: Seven Star Hotel, Tianjin Highrise Building, Tianjin, China.
• 2010: Case Study Feeding New York in New York. 3rd International Holcim Forum 2010 in Mexico City.
• 2010: Plan for Lower Manhattan. Exibition, Our Cities Ourselves: The Future of Transportation in Urban Life Center for Architecture, Greenwich Village, N.Y.
• 2012: concept for Xi'an, China Airport Office Building
• 2013: 28+: MOMA PS1 Rockaway.
• 2013: An alternative proposal for NYU.

Professional Recognition

• 2009, 2010: American Academy of Arts & Sciences Fellow
• 2010: American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Awards, Graham Foundation for the Visual Arts.
• 2013: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's “Design Mind” Award.
• 2015: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, Architecture, Planning and Design

Academic experience

Sorkin is an educator at the collegiate level. He was from 1993 to 2000, professor of urbanism and director of Institute of Urbanism of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. He has been a Visiting Professor to numerous schools, including, for ten year, a Visiting Professor of architecture at the Cooper Union of New York. Sorkin has held the Hyde Chair at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln College of Architecture, the Davenport Chair at Yale University School of Architecture, and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Eliel Saarinen Visiting Professorhip, University of Michigan. He has been a guest lecturer and critic at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, University of Illinois: Urbana Champaign, Aarhus School of Architecture, Copenhagen,Denmark, and the London Consortium.

Dedicated to education for social change, Sorkin has led student fieldwork in Jerusalem, Nicosia, Johannesburg, Havana. Since 2006, Sorkin has co-organized "Project New Orleans", with collaborators Carol McMichael Reese and Anthony Fontenot, to produce plans for post-Katrina rebuilding, a website, and national conference New Orleans under Reconstruction: The Crisis of Planning. In 2008, Sorkin was appointed Distinguished Professor of Architecture of the City University of New York.

Writing

Michael Sorkin is a member of the International Committee of Architectural Critics. For ten years, Sorkin was The Village Voice architecture critic. He reviews and evaluates contemporary architecture and urban dynamics, along the dimensions of environmentalism, sustainability, pedestrianization, public space, urban culture, and the legacy of modernist approaches to urban planning, for Architectural Record The New York Times, The Architectural Review, Metropolis Magazine, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, and the Nation. Sorkin has authored numerous essays, articles, and books.

Books

• Exquisite Corpse: Writing on Buildings London: Verso. (1991).
• Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42° N Latitude. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. (1993)
• Traffic In Democracy. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning. (1997)
• Some Assembly Required. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (2001)
• Pamphlet Architecture 22 : Other Plans: University of Chicago Studies, 1998-2000. (2002). New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
• Starting From Zero: Reconstructing Downtown New York. New York, NY: Routledge. (2003).
• Indefensible Space : The Architecture of the National Insecurity State. (Routledge, 2008)
• Twenty Minutes in Manhattan. London: Reaktion. (2009).
• All Over The Map: Writing on Buildings and Cities. London: Verso. (2011).

Edited publications, essays, and reporting, selected

• Michael Sorkin, “Minimums,” Village Voice, October 13, 1987, p. 100.
• Michael Sorkin, "Introduction: Variations on a Theme Park," in Michael Sorkin, (ed.), Variations on a Theme Park: Scenes From The Few American City and the End of Public Space. (Hill and Wang, 1992), pp. xi-xv.
• Michael Sorkin, "Introduction: Traffic in Democracy," in Joan Copjec, (ed.), Giving ground : the politics of propinquity. (London: Verso, 1999).
• Michael Sorkin, "Frozen Light," in Mildred Friedman, (ed.), Gehry talks : architecture + process. (New York : Rizzoli, 1999).
• Michael Sorkin, "Measure of Comfort," in Comfort : reclaiming place in a virtual world : Franz Ackermann, Peter Land, Sarah Morris. (Cleveland, Ohio : Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, 2001), pp. i-xi.
• Michael Sorkin, "The Center Cannot Hold," in Michael Sorkin & Sharon Zukin, (eds.),After the World Trade Center: rethinking New York City. (New York: Routledge, 2002).
• Michael Sorkin, "Sex, drugs, rock and roll, cars, dolphins, and architecture," in C. Lewallen, S. Seid, C. Lord, & Ant Farm, (eds.), Ant Farm, 1968-1978. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
• Michael Sorkin, "Lunch With Emilio," in Emilio Ambasz, & Jerrilynn Denise Dodds, (eds.) Analyzing Ambasz. (New York, Monacelli Press, 2004).
• Michael Sorkin, "3 Brand Aid; or, The Lexus and the Guggenheim (Further Tales of the Notorious B.I.G.ness)," in William S. Saunders, (ed.), Commodification and Spectacle in Architecture: A Harvard Design Magazine Reader. (University of Minnesota Press, 2005), pp. 22–33.
• Michael Sorkin, "Introduction: Saratoga Springs!," in George Ranalli, Saratoga, (San Rafael, Calif.: Oro Editions, 2009), pp. 6–11.
• Michael Sorkin,  Drawing the Line: Architects and Prisons. The Nation, August 27, 2013.
• Michael Sorkin,  Civilian Objects: Architecture lets us speak of the spoken indirectly. The Nation, Oct. 28, 2014
• Michael Sorkin,  Little Boxes: Micro-apartments have become trendy in planning circles, but their austerity is just another limit on the aspirations of the poor, The Nation, July 29, 2014
• Michael Sorkin, "Preface," in Ana Marí́a Durán Calisto, Matthias Altwicker, Michael Sorkin (eds.), Beyond Petropolis: Designing a Practical Utopia in Nueva Loja. (Shinzen, China: Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers, 2015).

Further reading

• Michael Sorkin, (ed.), Against the Wall: Israel's Barrier to Peace. (Norton, 2005).
• Carol McMichael Reese, Michael Sorkin, and Anthony Fontenot, (eds.), New Orleans under Reconstruction: The Crisis of Planning. (London: Verso, 2014).

External links

• Michael Sorkin Studio