Michael Sorkin papers and architectural drawings, 1952-2020, bulk 1978-2020

Michael Sorkin (1948-2020) was an American architectural critic, educator, designer, and curator. Sorkin significantly impacted twentieth-century and contemporary discourse on architecture and urbanism by questioning the role of architecture in society. His design work, academic positions in the United States and Vienna, and his extensive body of publications provided him a public platform to widely share his criticism, design pedagogy, and views of architecture.

After studying at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, and pursuing a Master in Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where he graduated only in 1983), Sorkin moved to New York City in 1973 where he was based for the rest of his life. In the 1980s, as the architecture critic of The Village Voice and a contributing writer to various publications, including The Nation, Vogue, House and Garden, The Architectural Review, and Architectural Record, Sorkin became known for his signature wit and pointed critiques of architecture's facilitation of capital accumulation, taking aim at International Style, Postmodernism, politics, or architects such as Robert Venturi and Philip Johnson, amongst many others. His lifelong writing career earned him international recognition as a provocative voice in the field.

In the 1980s, Sorkin founded the eponymous architecture firm Michael Sorkin Studio (based in New York with offices in Shanghai and Xi'an, China), whose early projects largely were unbuilt speculative provocations, including a proposal for a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. Michael Sorkin Studio produced designs of housing, office, and teaching complexes, landscape and urban master plans, hotels, scientific centers, and religious structures around the world. Sorkin's foundation of the non-profit organization Terreform Center for Advanced Urban Research in 2005 continued his leadership in architecture and design research and advocacy.

Michael Sorkin held over 20 professorships at universities across North America and Europe. Since 2000, Sorkin was a Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at City College of New York. His previous academic appointments included Professor of Urbanism and Director of the Institute of Urbanism at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Gensler Chair at Cornell University, Hyde Chair at Nebraska University, Saarinen Chair at the University of Michigan, Gilbert Chair at the University of Michigan, both the Davenport and Bishop Chair at Yale University, and professorships at the Architectural Association, Cooper Union, Harvard University, Sci-Arc, and Columbia University. By the time of his passing in 2020 due to COVID-19, Sorkin held an established position as a significant public intellectual in the field of architecture and urbanism, having published 20 major books and a significant number of articles in addition to pursuing his studio practice and engagement as an educator and curator.