Michael Sorkin: A Tribute
I saw Michael Sorkin about two weeks ago at the Spitzer School of Architecture. I didn’t know that this committee meeting would be the last time that we would see each other, speak with one another, and work together. Whoever does?
We sat together, not giving much thought to social distancing—no one was sick; no one was coughing; no one had a fever—and took care of the matters at hand. It was the ninth of March. The pandemic had started to stir in New York City, it was beginning to wreak havoc, but it had not yet derailed the architecture school, the college, and the city that Michael loved. Looking back, I’ve asked myself was there any premonition in the air of the tragedy to come?
Michael and I exchanged a few words, then a poignant glance, about an elderly colleague who had passed away weeks before. Both saddened and annoyed, he mentioned that he was forced to postpone a trip that he planned to take with Joan Copjec, his wife, to celebrate their lives together. He looked at me and asked, when would they be able to travel again? And where? Not answerable then, not now either.
My heart goes out to Joan and other members of Michael’s family. I can’t begin to imagine their grief and sorrow.
I’ve lost a friend and a colleague whom I knew and admired for years, someone I first met when I was in architecture school. Over the many years since, I worked with him, wrote for him, taught with him, debated him, disagreed with him, read him, and most of all learned from him. He was an architect, a writer, and a thinker who pushed us to be better at what we do; a lover of cities and city life. He was also an adamant defender of public education, who, like his beloved friend and mentor, the late Marshall Berman, stayed put at City College in the face of temptations by richer universities, and built our great architecture school. I’m profoundly sad that we are bereft of his voice and his person; a man so vital, so smart, so witty, so caring.
But I’m also angry—at the government that failed to protect him, and us—a government that has for so long failed to act in the interest of all its citizens. Maybe it’s too soon to say this, but I have a hunch that Michael would approve. His death should not have happened.
In 1915, the night before Joe Hill, famous laborer, songwriter, and Industrial Workers of the World union organizer, faced a firing squad on a trumped-charge of murder, he wrote Big Bill Haywood, president of the IWW. This is what he said: “Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organize.”
To Michael, in solidarity forever.
TWO HUNDRED FIFTY THINGS AN ARCHITECT SHOULD KNOW
by Michael Sorkin
1 The feel of cool marble under bare feet.
2 How to live in a small room with five strangers for six months.
3 With the same strangers in a lifeboat for one week.
4 The modulus of rupture.
5 The distance a shout carries in the city.
6 The distance of a whisper.
7 Everything possible about Hatshepsut’s temple (try not to see it as “modernist” avant la lettre).
8 The number of people with rent subsidies in New York City.
9 In your town (include the rich).
10 The flowering season for azaleas.
11 The insulating properties of glass.
12 The history of its production and use.
13 And of its meaning.
14 How to lay bricks.
15 What Victor Hugo really meant by ‘this will kill that.’
16 The rate at which the seas are rising.
17 Building information modeling (BIM).
18 How to unclog a Rapidograph.
19 The Gini coefficient.
20 A comfortable tread-to-riser ratio for a six-year-old.
21 In a wheelchair.
22 The energy embodied in aluminum.
23 How to turn a corner.
24 How to design a corner.
25 How to sit in a corner.
26 How Antoni Gaudí modeled the Sagrada Família and calculated its structure.
27 The proportioning system for the Villa Rotonda.
28 The rate at which that carpet you specified off-gasses.
29 The relevant sections of the Code of Hammurabi.
30 The migratory patterns of warblers and other seasonal travelers.
31 The basics of mud construction.
32 The direction of prevailing winds.
33 Hydrology is destiny.
34 Jane Jacobs in and out.
35 Something about feng shui.
36 Something about Vastu Shilpa.
37 Elementary ergonomics.
38 The color wheel.
39 What the client wants.
40 What the client thinks it wants.
41 What the client needs.
42 What the client can afford.
43 What the planet can afford.
44 The theoretical bases for modernity and a great deal about its factions and inflections.
45 What post-Fordism means for the mode of production of building.
46 Another language.
47 What the brick really wants.
48 The difference between Winchester Cathedral and a bicycle shed.
49 What went wrong in Fatehpur Sikri.
50 What went wrong in Pruitt-Igoe.
Michael Sorkin with graduate students, 2019. Courtesy Olgu Çalışkan.
51 What went wrong with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
52 Where the CCTV cameras are.
53 Why Mies really left Germany.
54 How people lived in Çatal Hüyük.
55 The structural properties of tufa.
56 How to calculate the dimensions of brise-soleil.
57 The kilowatt costs of photovoltaic cells.
58 Vitruvius.
59 Walter Benjamin.
60 Marshall Berman.
61 The secrets of the success of Robert Moses.
62 How the dome on the Duomo in Florence was built.
63 The reciprocal influences of Chinese and Japanese building.
64 The cycle of the Ise Shrine.
65 Entasis.
66 The history of Soweto.
67 What it’s like to walk down the Ramblas.
68 Back-up.
69 The proper proportions of a gin martini.
70 Shear and moment.
71 Shakespeare, et cetera.
72 How the crow flies.
73 The difference between a ghetto and a neighborhood.
74 How the pyramids were built.
75 Why.
76 The pleasures of the suburbs.
77 The horrors.
78 The quality of light passing through ice.
79 The meaninglessness of borders.
80 The reasons for their tenacity.
81 The creativity of the ecotone.
82 The need for freaks.
83 Accidents must happen.
84 It is possible to begin designing anywhere.
85 The smell of concrete after rain.
86 The angle of the sun at the equinox.
87 How to ride a bicycle.
88 The depth of the aquifer beneath you.
89 The slope of a handicapped ramp.
90 The wages of construction workers.
91 Perspective by hand.
92 Sentence structure.
93 The pleasure of a spritz at sunset at a table by the Grand Canal.
94 The thrill of the ride.
95 Where materials come from.
96 How to get lost.
97 The pattern of artificial light at night, seen from space.
98 What human differences are defensible in practice.
99 Creation is a patient search.
100 The debate between Otto Wagner and Camillo Sitte.
101 The reasons for the split between architecture and engineering.
102 Many ideas about what constitutes utopia.
103 The social and formal organization of the villages of the Dogon.
104 Brutalism, Bowellism, and the Baroque.
105 How to dérive.
106 Woodshop safety.
107 A great deal about the Gothic.
108 The architectural impact of colonialism on the cities of North Africa.
109 A distaste for imperialism.
110 The history of Beijing.
111 Dutch domestic architecture in the 17th century.
112 Aristotle’s Politics.
113 His Poetics.
114 The basics of wattle and daub.
115 The origins of the balloon frame.
116 The rate at which copper acquires its patina.
117 The levels of particulates in the air of Tianjin.
118 The capacity of white pine trees to sequester carbon.
119 Where else to sink it.
120 The fire code.
121 The seismic code.
122 The health code.
123 The Romantics, throughout the arts and philosophy.
124 How to listen closely.
125 That there is a big danger in working in a single medium. The logjam you don’t even know you’re stuck in will be broken by a shift in representation.
126 The exquisite corpse.
127 Scissors, stone, paper.
128 Good Bordeaux.
129 Good beer.
130 How to escape a maze.
131 QWERTY.
132 Fear.
133 Finding your way around Prague, Fez, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Kyoto, Rio, Mexico, Solo, Benares, Bangkok, Leningrad, Isfahan.
134 The proper way to behave with interns.
135 Maya, Revit, Catia, whatever.
136 The history of big machines, including those that can fly.
137 How to calculate ecological footprints.
138 Three good lunch spots within walking distance.
139 The value of human life.
140 Who pays.
141 Who profits.
142 The Venturi effect.
143 How people pee.
144 What to refuse to do, even for the money.
145 The fine print in the contract.
146 A smattering of naval architecture.
147 The idea of too far.
148 The idea of too close.
149 Burial practices in a wide range of cultures.
150 The density needed to support a pharmacy.
151 The density needed to support a subway.
152 The effect of the design of your city on food miles for fresh produce.
153 Lewis Mumford and Patrick Geddes.
154 Capability Brown, André Le Nôtre, Frederick Law Olmsted, Muso Soseki, Ji Cheng, and Roberto Burle Marx.
155 Constructivism, in and out.
156 Sinan.
157 Squatter settlements via visits and conversations with residents.
158 The history and techniques of architectural representation across cultures.
159 Several other artistic media.
160 A bit of chemistry and physics.
161 Geodesics.
162 Geodetics.
163 Geomorphology.
164 Geography.
165 The Law of the Andes.
166 Cappadocia first-hand.
167 The importance of the Amazon.
168 How to patch leaks.
169 What makes you happy.
170 The components of a comfortable environment for sleep.
171 The view from the Acropolis.
172 The way to Santa Fe.
173 The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
174 Where to eat in Brooklyn.
175 Half as much as a London cabbie.
176 The Nolli Plan.
177 The Cerdà Plan.
178 The Haussmann Plan.
179 Slope analysis.
180 Darkroom procedures and Photoshop.
181 Dawn breaking after a bender.
182 Styles of genealogy and taxonomy.
183 Betty Friedan.
184 Guy Debord.
185 Ant Farm.
186 Archigram.
187 Club Med.
188 Crepuscule in Dharamshala.
189 Solid geometry.
190 Strengths of materials (if only intuitively).
191 Ha Long Bay.
192 What’s been accomplished in Medellín.
193 In Rio.
194 In Calcutta.
195 In Curitiba.
196 In Mumbai.
197 Who practices? (It is your duty to secure this space for all who want to.)
198 Why you think architecture does any good.
199 The depreciation cycle.
200 What rusts.
201 Good model-making techniques in wood and cardboard.
202 How to play a musical instrument.
203 Which way the wind blows.
204 The acoustical properties of trees and shrubs.
205 How to guard a house from floods.
206 The connection between the Suprematists and Zaha.
207 The connection between Oscar Niemeyer and Zaha.
208 Where north (or south) is.
209 How to give directions, efficiently and courteously.
210 Stadtluft macht frei.
211 Underneath the pavement the beach.
212 Underneath the beach the pavement.
213 The germ theory of disease.
214 The importance of vitamin D.
215 How close is too close.
216 The capacity of a bioswale to recharge the aquifer.
217 The draught of ferries.
218 Bicycle safety and etiquette.
219 The difference between gabions and riprap.
220 The acoustic performance of Boston Symphony Hall.
221 How to open the window.
222 The diameter of the earth.
223 The number of gallons of water used in a shower.
224 The distance at which you can recognize faces.
225 How and when to bribe public officials (for the greater good).
226 Concrete finishes.
227 Brick bonds.
228 The Housing Question by Friedrich Engels.
229 The prismatic charms of Greek island towns.
230 The energy potential of the wind.
231 The cooling potential of the wind, including the use of chimneys and the stack effect.
232 Paestum.
233 Straw-bale building technology.
234 Rachel Carson.
235 Freud.
236 The excellence of Michel de Klerk.
237 Of Alvar Aalto.
238 Of Lina Bo Bardi.
239 The non-pharmacological components of a good club.
240 Mesa Verde National Park.
241 Chichen Itza.
242 Your neighbors.
243 The dimensions and proper orientation of sports fields.
244 The remediation capacity of wetlands.
245 The capacity of wetlands to attenuate storm surges.
246 How to cut a truly elegant section.
247 The depths of desire.
248 The heights of folly.
249 Low tide.
250 The Golden and other ratios.
Previously published on the Verso blog. Excerpt from What Goes Up: The Right and Wrongs to the City by Michael Sorkin, published by Verso Books. Copyright © 2018 by Michael Sorkin.
