Michael Sorkin

In the ensuing years, he taught at prominent universities around the world, practiced through his eponymous firm, established a nonprofit book press, and directed the urban design program at the City College of New York. He died at age 71 from COVID-19 complications.

• Name — Michael Sorkin • Birth Name — Michael David Sorkin • Born — 2 August 1948 • Birthplace — Washington, D.C., U.S. • Died — 26 March 2020 • Place of death — Manhattan, New York City, U.S. • Occupation — Architect, urban designer, writer, educator • Practice — Michael Sorkin Studio

Sorkin was born in Washington, D.C., in 1948. He was an architect and urbanist whose practice spanned design, planning, criticism, and teaching. Sorkin received a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1969, and a masters in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.Arch '74). Sorkin also held a master's degree in English from Columbia University (MA '70). He was founding principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio, a New York-based global design practice with special interests in urban planning, urban design and green urbanism.

Sorkin was house architecture critic for The Village Voice in the 1980s, and he authored numerous articles and books on the subjects of contemporary architecture, design, cities, and the role of democracy in architecture.

Sorkin was an educator at the collegiate level. He held positions of professor of urbanism and director of Institute of Urbanism of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna from 1993 to 2000, He was a visiting professor to many schools, including, for ten years, the Cooper Union in New York. Sorkin also 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 Professorship, University of Michigan. He was 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. He also taught at a number of institutions, including Columbia University, London's Architectural Association, and Harvard University. Dedicated to architectural education for social change, Sorkin oversaw fieldwork in distressed environments such as Johannesburg, South Africa and Havana, Cuba. He co-organized "Project New Orleans" with collaborators Carol McMichael Reese and Anthony Fontenot, to support the post-Katrina city. In 2008, Sorkin was appointed Distinguished Professor of Architecture of the City University of New York.

• 1994: Masterplan for the Brooklyn Waterfront. • 1994: Proposal for Südraum Leipzig • 1998: Alternative University of Chicago campus masterplan. • 2001: Proposal for Arverne Urban Renewal Area on the Rockaway peninsula, Queens, N.Y. • 2001: A Plan For Lower Manhattan. • 2004: Project for Penang Peaks, 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. Exhibition, 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: New York City Football Stadium Site Survey. • 2013: An alternative proposal for NYU.

Sorkin had a broad career as an architecture writer. He wrote on the topics of 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. He was a member of the International Committee of Architectural Critics. For ten years, Sorkin was architecture critic for The Village Voice, and he wrote for Architectural Record, The New York Times, The Architectural Review, Metropolis, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, Architectural Review, and The Nation. As a volume editor, he organized multi-authored publications, and he contributed essays to a range of architecture publications. He also authored 20 books.

Sorkin died on March 26, 2020, from complications brought on by COVID-19 in Manhattan. His death was among the design profession's most prominent losses during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic — making news internationally and met with an outpouring of tributes and obituaries in mainstream, leftist, and architectural media.

• Can China's Cities Survive? in Terreform (ed.) Letters to the Leaders of China: Kongjian Yu and the Future of the Chinese, pp. 8–17. • Dwelling Machines in Design Quarterly (1987) • The Domestic Apparatus in Ranalli, G., "George Ranalli: buildings and projects." Princeton Architectural Press (1988) • Ciao Manhattan in New York Architecture: 1970 to 1990 (1989) • Forward in Vanlaethem, F.,"Gaetano Pesce: architecture, design, art." New York: Rizzoli (1989) • Nineteen Millenial Mantras in Architecture in Transition: Between Deconstruction and New Modernsim (1991) • Preface to Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates: Buildings and Projects 1967-1992 (1992) • Ten for TEN in TEN Arquitectos (Firm), "TEN Arquitectos: Enrique Norten, Bernardo Gómez-Pimienta." New York: Monacelli Press (1998) • Introduction: Traffic in Democracy in Giving Ground: The Politics of Propinquity (1999) • Frozen Light in Friedman, M. (ed.), "Gehry talks: architecture + process." New York: Rizzoli (1999) • The Measure of Comfort in Comfort: Reclaiming Place in a Virtual World (2001) • Lunch with Emilio in Ambasz, E. & Dodds, J., (eds.), "Analyzing Ambasz." New York, Monacelli Press (2004) • More or Less in The HOME House Project: The Future of Affordable Housing (2004) • With the Grain in Whereabouts: New Architecture with Local Identities (2004) • Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Cars, Dolphins, and Architecture in Lewallen, C., Seid, S., Lord, C., & Ant Farm (Design group)(eds.),"Ant Farm, 1968–1978." Berkeley: University of California Press (2004) • The Second Greatest Generation in Saunders, W. S., & Frampton, K. "Commodification and spectacle in architecture: A Harvard design magazine reader." Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005, pp. 22–33. • Saratoga Springs! in Saratoga (2009) • Essay in In/formed by the land: The architecture of Carl Abbott (2013) • Foreword: Who Is Aragonés? in Miguel Ángel Aragonés (2013)