Michael Sorkin is one of the most forthright and engaging architectural writers in the world. In
What Goes Up he charts the dehumanising regimes of mayors Bloomberg and De Blasio that created a city of glittering towers and increasing inequality. He looks at what has happened to Ground Zero, as a place of memory has been reconstructed by ‘staritects’ and turned into malls. The city, he suggests, has to be reimagined from the street up on a human scale, to develop new ways to revitalise neighbourhoods.
Alongside these essays on New York, Sorkin also brings his lifetime’s experience as an architect to bear. He talks of the joy of observing a city in order to understand it. Why a young designer must learn to draw by hand rather than only use a computer. There are also personal encounters with some of the greatest names who have changed the city. Sorkin gets lost in Rio with Zaha Hadid and talks about the old Bronx with Marshall Berman.
Sobre el autor
Michael Sorkin is an award-winning architect, Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the City College of New York, as well as President of the non-profit architecture and urban think tank Terreform. In 2010, he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters award in architecture and, in 2013, the National Design Award in the Design Mind category. For ten years, Sorkin was architecture critic for the Village Voice; he is currently the critic at the Nation and writes regularly for Architectural Record and the Architectural Review. His books include Exquisite Corpse, Some Assembly Required, Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, Wiggle, and All Over the Map.