Who is 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. Michael Sorkin also serves as an international consultant on urban and architectural design and participates in numerous juries, seminars, and symposia. 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. He 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.
These are Michael Sorkins ‘Eleven Tasks for Urban Design’:
(http://www.archnet.org/library/pubdownloader/pdf/9401/doc/DPC1457.pdf.)
1. Reinforced neighborhoods – the neighborhood must be at the center it is the means by which the social city is comprehended.
2. Make it Sustainable
3. Add Green
4. Secure the Edge
5. Make Public Spaces
6. Be Sure Rooms have Views
7. Finesse the Mix
8. Elaborate Movement
9. Localize Architecture
10. Defend Privacy
11. Make it Beautiful
Sorkin believes that ‘the exponential growth of cities is one of the greatest crises the planet confronts.’ With over 3 billion people now living in cities across the globe, of which half live in slums. He states that we are not prepared for this and that this has caused the results of the urbanism of sprawl as well as the rise of mega-cities: ‘Such a condition is fundamentally unsustainable and largely out of control. Radical steps are needed to assure the equitable distribution of resources, the defense of the environment, the creation of spaces for democracy, and the sustenance of lively and humane places for life.’ As the urban population grows at an inconceivable rate, Sorkin suggests that there ‘is an urgent need for the construction of numerous new cities, built from scratch and sited with intelligence. This is not simply the only sensible way to deal with urban growth, it is necessary to conserve the genius of existing urban environments.’
Sorkin has also raised fundamental questions about social equity as well as expressing alternative visions for New York. He believes that terrorism has opened new space for thinking about radical alternatives to urban planning. With 15 million square feet of office space lost in the 9/11 attacks, it is projected that by 2020 New York City will need four ties this space. This had raised the question of where the investment should go? Although much thought has been put into creating a massive new development on the WTC site, Sorkin has argued the investment should be dispersed to multiple sites across the city. He believes a ‘village structure’ with a ‘network of autonomous, comprehensible places’ that would make the city look at itself more as an entire networked form rather than the concentrating on the specific site. He has seen the tragedy as a unique opportunity to join physical planning and investment to create a better city.
Rebuilding must meditate decisively on sprawl and density, engage the role of renewables in powering our cities and lifestyles, act dramatically to expand public transportation, and revisit planning and building codes for sustainability and self-protection. Decisive, careful, and comprehensive planning is an imperative, the only way to mitigate the effects of outrageous poverty on the fabric and organization of the city, to recast urban organization along lines informed by 21st-century knowledge.
When asked what direction cities will change in the 21st Century? Sorkin says,
‘One of the ways in which they must change is in overcoming the hegemony of the automobile. Cars are the enemy of sustainable cities, conducing sprawl, destroying neighborhoods, polluting the air, and killing millions. In light of the truly enormous threat that planetary growth poses to the “natural” environment, cities must dramatically rework their habits and morphologies. On the positive side, I would argue that cities are at the core of sensible solutions to the environmental crisis. They are uniquely efficient and the crucibles of culture and cooperation. We need beautiful, humane, and sensible cities in order to survive. Indeed, in an era of powerful transnationals and weakened states, cities will become the very bulwark of the possibility of democracy.’
Sorkin again mentions a village style structure in ‘Other Plans’ his masterplan proposal for University of Chicago campus. He believes in the creation of a network of communities instead of putting an influx of people in a specific space. The current system of houses and commons could also be expanded to form the substrate of a series of larger campus communities. The word “village” (used by Ed Barnes in his north campus proposal of the Sixties) is a good one to describe a style of aggregation that embraces the legibility of its individual parts while still offering a cohesive feeling of something larger. Each of these new villages might include houses of various sizes; a commons for dining, student activities, and athletics; staff residences; academic space; and commercial space. Each village would develop its own distinctive physical and social character and with it a set of relationships and loyalties that are the bedrock of any community.… We propose seven locations for these collegiate villages.
Even though Sorkins masterplan was dropped by the university, he continued his ideas, eventually publishing them into a 100 pg pamphlet called ‘Other Plans’. In the book he talks about the universities decision to switch from the masterplan approach to small strategy insertions ‘buildings are assigned to available sites, architects hired to execute them’ with everything merges at the end. With this approach Sorkin says ‘There’s no imagination of the idea of site, no malleability to the big picture. The conceit that enables this is the university already processes a planning default, the quadrangle, sufficiently strong and clear conceptually and practically’. So a policy of insertion is taken rather than rethinking the whole site.
The existing University was designed by Henry Cobb. His design for the campus was a series of quadrangles that fitted into the existing city grid pattern. Its context reflects continuous street grids that interlink the quads, each enclose a series of green spaces. The architecture is of ‘English Gothic’ style and was inspired by Oxford University.
Cobb said the idea was "to remove the mind of the student from the the busy mercantile conditions of Chicago and surround him with an air of quiet dignity." Frank Lloyd Wright, who’s proposal was not chosen grumbled for decades that one couldn't educate truly American minds in borrowed European architecture.
For me the most interesting part of this book is when Sorkin anaylses the set campuses. Particularly the North Campus where he talks about energetically managing the mix. From the variety of uses within the north campus (offices, classrooms, athletics, library, residences, museum etc) Sorkin states that they should be retained and enlarged to create coherence and connection to the main quads. He talks about the creation of 'mixed-use' buildings for creating a 'richly cross-programmed environment' with the potential to 'develop a unique and stimulating sense of place'.
This would create a more dynamic and complex design to what presently lacks 'spatial coherence'. This campus also has a mixed range of building scales, from the small museum to its high-rise tower as well as the 'Regenstein Library' which is a vast density.
Sorkin believed that this area of the university was the most in need of a program or vision. He also goes onto say that the 'huge mass' of the 'Regenstein Library' kills the circulation around it and creates a divide between north and south: 'By closing off this flow, the Regenstein imposes a tremendous obstacle to everything to its north, walling it off from the center of gravity of the main quads, forcing motion to detour around it'
Sorkin's drawings suggest a much more flowing vision, with freedom to access and a functionality about the space. He wanted to open up the space and bring new life into the existing environments, such as his idea to renovate the 'Regenstein' with the creation of an 'Omnipaideum' to from a social and intellectual center: 'a place for gathering and disseminating information in all media, a hive for storage and exchange?'
This also opened up a major access route on the the north/south axis from the quadrangle through the north campus. He believes this would add clarification to the 'relationship of the existing quadrangles to the north campus' and create a 'richer' and more connected environment.
He again uses the comparison to a village structure, with the small-scaled uses hinging on the periphery of the centeral mass. This is what Sorkins whole masterplan was aimed at doing, providing solutions to improve the space and movement through it.
Sorkin sees the need for connected pathways, related uses, major axes of travel, and similar scale in order to create a cohesive space that fosters interactions among all members of the university community—a large mission of the university.
Michael Sorkin, a University of Chicago alumnus, clearly has a special concern for the student life, university objectives, and unique character he feels the campus design can foster. However it has to be noted that as Sorkin's masterplan was not bought by the university that he had no budget to respect or client.
This is a map of the current plan.These are some extracts from a recent Conference on Sustainable Urban Design where Michael Sorkin talks about Megacities:
But the realized trademark of contemporary urbanism is the rise of the megacities (those over 10 million), he said.
“Like systems and organizations of many other types, cities too can reach a scale at which they are simply unable to perform coordinated movements,” he adds that when rising beyond a certain size they become unmanageable and insurmountable for poor residents to raise their status.
Also declaring that the rise of these cities must be stopped along with their proponents, because the solutions will be local.
“Our economy directs the major portion of our urban investment and development, not to traditional urban areas but to the endless periphery of the multinational globapolis. Unfortunately, this unbridled growth has also acquired a large cadre of enthusiasts who range from the usual laissez faire creeps to mindless architectural exponents of bigness, eager to be caught up in the wave of hyper-growth.”
“One of the cultural resistances that must be overcome by a sustainable urbanism is our own inclination to think in terms of technical solutions,” he said, clarifying that technology must not be shunned, but used properly. “Think of technology as an instrumentality that confound and secure the benefits of the local.”
Sorkin called an end to sprawl by suggesting clear city boundaries.
-- Diversity is crucial to renewal and to health.
-- Starbucks on every corner is the enemy.
-- The green city will be delimited. The only cure for sprawl is to call a halt to it. To build cities where boundaries are clear to enable them to properly monitor their resources.
-- The green city will be body-based. The city must be conducive to the mental and physical health of its inhabitants. The requirements of the body are the single most crucial measure for urban design.
-- Mobility. Low architecture. 5-6 stories is the natural limit. Mobility will influence horizontal and vertical axis.
-- Propinquity. Providing for the coincidental and intentional meeting of bodies. The physical right to the city is fundamental.
-- Respiration. Indisputable motto: Stadtluft macht frei. “Only however, if you can catch a breath of it.”
-- The green city will be green.
On a final point, Sorkin said the sustainable city will be “eutopian,” adding that he changed the spelling of the word, adding an ”˜e', to change its meaning “from no place to a better place” and to suggest that its building must be collective “and their forms shifting and mysterious.”
Books to look at:
➢ The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis, by Ghent Urban Studies Team, Dirk “De” Meyer, Kristiaan Versluys, Kristiaan Borret, Published by 010 Publishers, 1999.
➢ Some Assembly Required, by Michael Sorkin, Published by U of Minnesota Press, 2001
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