Michael Sorkin

Michael Sorkin Studio, New York City

Monday, February 19, 2007
5:30 P.M. - Lawrence J. Plym Auditorium
Temple Hoyne Buell Hall

Max Abramovitz Distinguished Lecture

Michael Sorkin

Michael Sorkin is the principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio in New York City, a design practice devoted to both practical and theoretical projects at all scales with a special interest in the city and in green architecture. Recent projects include planning and design for a highly sustainable 5000-unit community in Penang, Malaysia, master planning for Hamburg, Visselhoevede, Leipzig, and Schwerin, Germany, planning for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, urban design in Leeds, England, campus planning at the University of Chicago and CCNY, studies of the Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts, housing design in Far Rockaway, Vienna, and Miami, a resort in the desert of Abu Dhabi, a park in Queens, New York, a group of houses in Coorg, India, and a very low-cost housing prototype for rural Alabama. The Sorkin Studio is active in research in issues of urban morphology, sustainability, and equity and has been the recipient of numerous awards from, among others, Progressive Architecture, ID, and the AIA. Currently funded research includes a project to examine the limits of self-sufficiency within New York City and the design of a sustainable motor rickshaw for India.

Michael Sorkin has been Professor of Architecture and the Director of the Graduate Urban Design Program at the City College of New York since 2000. From 1993 to 2000 he was Professor of Urbanism and Director of the Institute of Urbanism at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Previously, Sorkin has been professor at numerous schools of architecture including the Architectural Association, the Aarhus School of Architecture, Cooper Union (for ten years), Carleton, Columbia, Yale (holding both Davenport and Bishop Chairs), Harvard, Cornell (Gensler Chair), Nebraska (Hyde Chair), Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas, Michigan (Saarinen Chair) and Minnesota. Dedicated to urbanism as both an artistic practice and a medium for social amelioration, Sorkin has conducted studios in such stressed environments as Jerusalem, Nicosia, Johannesburg, Havana, Cairo, Kumasi, and Hanoi. In 2005 -2006, he directed studio projects for the post-Katrina reconstruction of Biloxi and New Orleans at both CCNY and the University of Michigan and is currently working with his students on a project for a highly sustainable city in the Amazon basin.

Sorkin lectures around the world, is the author of several hundred articles in a wide range of both professional and general publications, and is currently contributing editor at Architectural Record (for which he writes a regular column) and Metropolis. For ten years, he was the architecture critic of The Village Voice. His books include Variations on A Theme Park, Exquisite Corpse, Local Code, Giving Ground (edited with Joan Copjec), Wiggle (a monograph of the studio's work), Some Assembly Required, Other Plans, The Next Jerusalem, After The Trade Center (edited with Sharon Zukin), Starting From Zero, Analyzing Ambasz, and Against the Wall. Forthcoming in 2007 are Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, Eutopia, All Over the Map, and Indefensible Space.

Sorkin also serves as an international consultant on urban and architectural design and participates in numerous juries, seminars, and symposia. Most recently, this activity has included chairing a jury to choose two very large urban planning and architectural projects for the Municipality of Istanbul, a similar jury in Almaty, Kazakhstan, a jury to choose a design for the headquarters of Genzyme, a campus planning consultancy to the University of Cincinnati, expert assessment for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, as well as juries for design magazines, architectural schools, and professional organizations. Sorkin was founding co-chair of the Chrysler Design Award and currently serves as a member of the boards of directors or advisors of a number of civic and academic bodies, including the Architectural League, Archeworks, the Institute for Urban Design, the London Consortium, and several institutes at CUNY.

Michael Sorkin was born in Washington, D.C. and received his architectural training at Harvard and MIT. He also holds degrees from the University of Chicago and Columbia.