Exquisite Corpse: Writings on Buildings

by Michael Sorkin

‘Exquisite Corpse’ was a game played by the surrealists in which someone drew on a piece of paper, folded it and passed it to the next person to draw on until, finally, the sheet was opened to reveal a calculated yet random composition. In this entertaining and provocative book, Michael Sorkin suggests that cities are similarly assembled by many players acting with varying autonomy in a complicit framework. As unfolding terrain of invention, the city is also a means of accommodating disparity, of contextualizing sometimes startling juxtapositions.

Sorkin’s aim is to widen the debate about the creation of buildings beyond the immediate issues of technology and design. He discusses the politics and culture of architecture with daring, often devastating, observations about the institutions and personalities who have dominated the profession over the past decade. Their preoccupation with the empty style of ‘beach houses and Disneyland’ has consistently trivialized the full constructive scope of contemporary architecture’s possibilities.

Sorkin’s intervetions range from the development scandals of New York where ‘skyscrapers stand at the intersection between grid and greed’, through the deconstructivist architectural culture of Los Angeles, to the work and ideas of architects, developers and critics such as Alvar Aalto, Norman Foster, Paul Goldberger, Michael Graves, Coop Himmelblau, Philip Johnson, Leon Krier, Frank Llyod Wright, Richard Rogers, Carlo Scarpa, James Stirling, Donald Trump, Tom Wolfe and Lebbeus Woods. Throughout Sorkin combines stinging polemic with a powerful call for a rebirth of architecture that is visionary and experimental—a recuperated ‘dreamy science’.

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction, Urbanism, Essays, Cities

376 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1991

About the author

Michael Sorkin (1948, Washington, D.C.- March 2020, New York) was an American architectural critic and author of several hundred articles in a wide range of both professional and general publications. He was the Principal of Michael Sorkin Studio in New York City, a design practice devoted to both practical and theoretical projects at all scales, with special interest in sustainable urban environments/green city architecture. He was also Chair of the Institute for Urban Design, a non-profit organization that provides a forum for debate over critical issues in contemporary urban planning, development and design.

From 1993 to 2000 he was Professor of Urbanism and Director of the Institute of Urbanism at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He has been a professor at numerous schools of architecture including the Architectural Association, the Aarhus School of Architecture, Cooper Union, Carleton, Columbia, Yale (holding both the Davenport and Bishop Chairs), Harvard and Cornell (the Gensler Chair). He is currently Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York.

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, Hanoi, Nueva Loja (Ecuador) and Wuhan (China). In 2005 -2006, he directed studio projects for the post-Katrina reconstruction of Biloxi and New Orleans.

Reviews

[Andrew]

A series of essays and criticism by the late Michael Sorkin (by far the realest ass Sorkin in the public sphere), on urbanist and architectural topics. He has the sort of witty, humanistic voice you want from someone like this, he shits on Philip Johnson and Michael Graves just the right amount, and generally acts as a sort of old-school flaneur intellectual we really just don't have enough of these days (one group of our intellectuals having long since retreated to their bedrooms and their wifi connections, the other having gone on to the ferocious low-stakes cage matches of academia on the other). Some of the essays are a bit dated, but even with those, his voice was compelling enough that I actually went to do the research on the subjects he was talking about -- always a sign of an impressive interlocutor.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am finding the star rating system somewhat limited. This is a great book, but its greatness and my enjoyment are too separate considerations. I started this anthology a month into the [first] COVID-19 lock-down/exile and am just finishing now. I was reading other things in between. The writing is brilliant but not easy. This book would have been at the table the Strand used to have in the basement labeled "Scholarly." I always went to that table looking for scholarly-weird. But it might not be your thing.
Anyway.
Imagine a time when the Village Voice was a thriving publication, presenting high-quality writing on politics, art, and culture each week. People paid for it, seeking it out at a bodega or a newsstand on their way home from the club or in to the office. The bills were paid by the real estate ads, but talented, skilled writers could make some (small) coin and build an audience. And it had an architecture column. Seems like science fiction today.
Anyway.
Some of the architecture theory is beyond me, but Sorkin had interesting things to says about what was happening in the 1980s. Points he made 30-plus years ago about D. Trump, unregulated capitalism and racist public policy predicted what is happening in the U.S. now.
Anway.
Michael Sorkin died of COVID complications on March 26.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

sexy sexy writer

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great compilation of many of Sorkin's Village Voice essays. Great stuff generally (see especially "SOM Story").

[Tom]

I started this at some point. Sorkin keeps badmouthing Goldberger, so I stopped and read some Goldberger.

[Rory Hyde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sorkin is the essential 'activist critic', deploying barbs against proposed developments in NYC to sway public opinion. Always humanist, often humorous, when not too enraged. Every city needs one.