Michael Sorkin (1948–2020) was Principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio, a global design practice working at all scales with a special interest in the city and green architecture; President and founder of Terreform, a non-profit institute dedicated to research into the forms and practices of just and sustainable urbanism; and Co-President of the Forum and Institute for Urban Design. He was Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at CCNY, author or editor of numerous books on architecture and urbanism, and architecture critic for The Nation. In 2013, he won the National Design Award as “Design Mind.”
The amount of affordable housing in New York City is shrinking, and Mayor de Blasio’s development plans might not reverse the trend.
Inclusionary zoning laws are among the few tools left to ensure the creation of affordable housing.
MoMA’s new expansion plans represent avant-gardism at its most deracinated.
The urbanization of China and infusion of Western forms amounts to a second Cultural Revolution.
Real estate has become an extractive industry, mining the air for property.
No one has been more loving or lucid in his depiction, criticism and celebration of urbanity.
A call for architects to refuse to design chambers of living death.
The architecture of the new World Trade Center buildings emphasizes that their business is none of ours.