Michael Sorkin, 1948-2020
March 26, 2020 5:00 PM   Subscribe

Michael Sorkin, widely considered to be one of the sharpest critics of the contemporary architecture world, has died of complications from COVID-19.

From his days as a student at Columbia through his death, Sorkin had access to the highest levels of practice and education, but nonetheless maintained a lifelong reputation for his willingness to focus his disdain on friends and foe alike. His longest tenure was as resident critic for the Village Voice, where he would fire barbs on a regular basis at Paul Goldberger, who was at the time critic for the New York Times.

For many years, he was the only prominent figure willing to openly reference Philip Johnson's Nazi sympathies.

Though his own design practice could probably be described as fairly esoteric, leaving very few realized works relative to his peers, he was always a committed critic in search of more egalitarian urban spaces, going so far as to attemp a wholesale reimagining of Manhattan through the lens of the most mundane but essential frames, a local zoning code.
posted by 99_ (17 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
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posted by turbowombat at 5:18 PM on March 26, 2020


Oh my.

I feel like we’re on the front end of seeing a lot of posts like this.

And we thought 2016 was a bad year for beloved celebrities passing (and it was).
posted by darkstar at 5:21 PM on March 26, 2020 [12 favorites]


that paul goldberger takedown quote linked to..... needs an entire burns unit to deal with.

perhaps sorkin is designing it in the afterlife. RIP.
posted by lalochezia at 5:29 PM on March 26, 2020


I had a grim thought that perhaps we need a Meta on cadence for this sort of thing, considering that Vittorio Gregotti and Terrence McNally both died in the past week as well.
posted by 99_ at 5:29 PM on March 26, 2020 [5 favorites]


I agree that we need a meta, Yeah, Floyd Cardoz has also died from COVID. It was a shocker because I had just finished watching the Ugly Delicious episode on Indian food and he seems to have contracted COVID on the trip he had just filmed for Ugly Delicious.

These deaths will not be the last, I fear.

So, a

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for an irascible critic that punctured the egos of the architects around him.
posted by jadepearl at 6:07 PM on March 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


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posted by allthinky at 6:22 PM on March 26, 2020


A brilliant writer, a fearless critic, savagely funny and always ahead of his time. In 1985, he said of "young master builder" Donald Trump's proposal to build the world's tallest skyscraper on the Upper West Side, "Was ever a man more preoccupied with getting it up in public?"
posted by How the runs scored at 6:25 PM on March 26, 2020 [9 favorites]


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posted by benzenedream at 6:33 PM on March 26, 2020


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posted by interrupt at 6:40 PM on March 26, 2020


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posted by toodleydoodley at 7:43 PM on March 26, 2020


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posted by q*ben at 8:39 PM on March 26, 2020


A great, incisive mind.

These early days of COVID deaths, we’re already losing the best and brightest among us. Echoes of the AIDS crisis.

Godspeed, Michael.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:47 PM on March 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


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posted by filtergik at 2:36 AM on March 27, 2020


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posted by daybeforetheday at 3:52 AM on March 27, 2020


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so sad, I will mourn him
posted by mumimor at 9:33 AM on March 27, 2020


Yes, there will be many, many more of these. It is like AIDS -- and like 9/11, the target is NYC and all who live there.
posted by jrochest at 11:32 AM on March 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


I'm going to request that we leave that particular comparison right here and not use it further.
posted by schmod at 8:28 PM on March 27, 2020


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