This collection is available for use by appointment in the Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. For further information, please email avery-drawings@library.columbia.edu.
The collection documents the writings, design projects, academic work, and personal life of Michael Sorkin, his design firm Michael Sorkin Studio, and the non-profit urban consulting practice Terreform. The content spans from 1952 to 2020, with the bulk of the work focusing on the criticism and design work produced between 1978 and 2020. The collection contains drafts, manuscripts, contracts, and clippings of published and unpublished articles, books, poems, scripts, and other writings; lecture scripts and event materials; professional and personal correspondence; files on early and student life; and project files and related design and presentation materials, including approximately 2,175 drawings (primarily conceptual sketches and site plans).
The files included in the collection were likely organized and curated by Michael Sorkin, as well as Joan Copjec and Michael Sorkin's mother, Ruth Sorkin. Researchers may encounter occasional sticky notes on items added by Joan Copjec to provide context.
Research files refer to newspaper clippings, photocopies, and other reference materials.
Series I: Major Publications and Projects
Series I contains drafts, final manuscripts, correspondence, contracts, research files, and notes for books written and edited by Michael Sorkin. It includes various unpublished projects. Design and consulting reports are not included and can be found in Series VI: Design and Office Papers. The series also includes a curated selection of republished articles organized by their final collected publication.
Series II documents the writing of Michael Sorkin through drafts, final manuscripts, clippings and full publications, photocopies, correspondence, contracts, and research files. It is primarily organized chronologically, divided by decades, and ranges from 1959 to 2020. Undated writings have been organized alphabetically or compiled if untitled.
Not all writings published by Michael Sorkin are included, nor does every published piece include both final or draft versions. Due to the expanse of the collection and the uncertain nature of some of the writings, no clear distinction has been drawn between published and unpublished pieces or between scholarly and creative writings. It includes articles, poems, prose, and a substantial number of undated movie and play scripts. The series likely includes drafts of undated or untitled lecture scripts, with potential duplicates found in Series IV: Professional Papers, Lectures. Major figures and themes are listed in the scope and content notes for individual entries.
Various dates have been inferred or estimated from the content or residence address mentioned in the drafts. Numerous drafts had been organized by address by the owner and filed together in a folder titled "1978-84?". It seems likely that Michael Sorkin lived at these addresses between 1975 and 1986 based on other dated drafts. Sorkin may also potentially have moved back and forth between apartments.
Series III covers Michael Sorkin's early and student life up to his graduate studies. It is organized by institution, from elementary school to graduate university program, and contains school and university reports, clippings about Michael Sorkin, student papers and drafts, diplomas, and course notes. It also includes articles written by his mother Ruth Sorkin about her son, a school newsletter edited by Michael Sorkin, files on his volunteerism for the Jewish Agency for Israel, activism, and files on Sorkin's hometown and family home at Hollin Hills. Researchers will not find any files on Michael Sorkin's studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design or design studio files for his time at MIT.
Various writings produced during Michael Sorkin's undergraduate and graduate studies can be found in Series II, such as the editorial work for The Chicago Maroon and the Grey City Journal, publications of the University of Chicago, and the The Burgundy Bugle by the Burgundy Farm Day School.
Series IV: Professional Papers
Series IV contains professional correspondence; interviews with Michael Sorkin; articles on Sorkin including profiles, exhibition reviews, and project reviews; contracts for books, articles, and scripts; book reviews; files on academic work and educational roles; files on institutional roles, including the Venice Biennale and Aga Khan Awards; and lecture scripts, slides, recordings on CDs, and event posters and flyers. Each type is organized chronologically. Articles on work produced by Michael Sorkin Studio and Terreform can be found in Series IV.
Series V regroups files on Michael Sorkin's acting pursuits, including photographs, event flyers and posters, correspondence and reviews; photographs of Sorkin; personal correspondence; early design and travel sketches; and other photographs.
Series VI: Design and Office Papers [CLOSED PENDING ARCHIVAL PROCESSING]
Approximately 50 linear feet or records. Anticipated to be open for research in Fall 2025.
Series VII: Architectural Drawings [CLOSED PENDING ARCHIVAL PROCESSING]
Approximately 133 tubes of drawings. Anticipated to be open for research in Fall 2025.
This collection is available for use by appointment in the Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. For further information, please email avery-drawings@library.columbia.edu.
In addition to permission from Columbia University, permission of the copyright owner (if not Columbia University) and/or any holder of other rights (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) may also be required for reproduction, publication, distributions, and other uses. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of any item and securing any necessary permissions rests with the persons desiring to publish the item. Columbia University makes no warranties as to the accuracy of the materials or their fitness for a particular purpose.
Michael Sorkin papers and architectural drawings, 1952-2020, Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.
This collection was donated by Joan Copjec in 2023 (2023.004).
Columbia University Libraries, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library
This collection was processed and the finding aid written by Lasse Rau, Graduate Intern, in Summer 2024.
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.
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches for other collections at Columbia University, through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, and through ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
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