Publisher's Synopsis
Michael Sorkin is one of the most visible and talked-about architects today. He was for several years the influential and outspoken architectural critic at the Village Voice, a critical and polemical yet humorous voice in contemporary culture. In recent years he has begun to focus on his own work. This is the first complete volume on the multifaceted architecture and design projects of the Michael Sorkin Studio. The work of the studio is grounded in the belief that the city is both the primary source of the social meaning of the architecture and the most important challenge confronting the profession today. Particularly significant is the ongoing inquiry into prospective forms sustainable, post-technological cities, presented here in a range of formal experiments that examine architecture at different scales. Many of the projects are theoretical and experimental part invention and part critique and come to fruition through drawings, models, exhibitions, writings, and installations. All of these are shown in the book, accompanied by Sorkin's own texts, which discuss the goals of each project, the influences on it, and the research and design process, as well as its architectural, social, and political commentary. Sorkin believes that every architect has to reinvent architecture, and this book is a record of the research behind his own ambitious attempts at reinvention.
