Michael Sorkin (1948 — 2020)

Dearest Comrades,

Our dear leader Michael Sorkin, the prolific writer, urbanist and architect, passed away on March 26, 2020, from coronavirus. 

The Michael Sorkin family, at Terreform, Michael Sorkin Studio, and Urban Research, has been overwhelmed by the response to the news of Michael's passing. 

Michael has given us all much work to get on with. You can be reassured that Michael's presence will continue to be all over the map!

Michael was the President of Terreform that he founded in 2005. As with all Michael's work, Terreform was created to further the mission of more equitable, sustainable, and beautiful cities for our urbanizing planet. All of Terreform's multiple books are published by its imprint Urban Research, where Michael served as Editor-in-Chief. 

In its fifteen years of existence, Terreform has developed a number of proposals for a more just and beautiful New York. Terreform’s beginnings are rooted in the project New York City (Steady) State that sought to answer the question of how can we get the ecological footprint of the city to be equivalent to that of its political boundary? Homegrown is the first volume of New York (Steady) State and will be published in the near future. Outside of New York, Terreform initiated a proposal to ensure that the Obama Library serves as a catalyst for urban development of the South Side of Chicago as a whole. 

Terreform, as with Michael himself, has research projects that far exceed the  boundaries of the United States.  Our first publication this year was to be Open Gaza, a project that reflected Michael's long-standing commitment to the Palestine struggle for social and spatial justice. Other upcoming book projects include: Nanjing Charter, Between Catastrophe and Revolution: Essays in Honor of Mike Davis, Gregory Ain: Low-Cost Modern Housing and the Construction of a Social Landscape, Syria Unsettled and Stupid Cities. 

Terreform, New York City, March 26, 2020.

Please share your memories of Michael below in the comments or on our facebook page.

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Michael left us all with a lot of work to do at Terreform!

For us to be able to carry on with the work of the Terreform legacy and mission, please consider a tax-deductible donation.

Projects include Michael's Magnum Opus New York City (Steady) State and its first volume Home Grown; Open Gaza; Stupid Cities; South Side Chicago... and many more!

D O N A T E

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New York Times: Michael Sorkin, 71, Dies; Saw Architecture as a Vehicle for Change

Michael Sorkin by Jeff Barnett Winsby

Joseph Giovannini

Mr. Sorkin, who died of the coronavirus, promoted social justice in his prodigious output of essays, lectures and designs.

This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

Michael Sorkin, one of architecture’s most outspoken public intellectuals, a polymath whose prodigious output of essays, lectures and designs, all promoting social justice, established him as the political conscience in the field, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71.

His wife and only immediate survivor, Joan Copjec, said the cause was the coronavirus.

In lectures and in years of teaching, Mr. Sorkin inspired audiences and students to use architecture to change lives, resist the status quo and help achieve social equity. His motivational writings and projects helped reset the field’s moral compass.

With degrees from the University of Chicago and Columbia University, and a master’s in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he moved in 1973 from Cambridge to New York, a city he said he adored for its opera and toasted bagels. It remained his home for the rest of his life. …

e-flux: For Michael Sorkin, by Eyal Weizman

Locked down in stunned, helpless isolation with the exit sign switched off, I heard that Michael had died, without a warning or a goodbye. The contemporary prophet of public space and urban conviviality died in a hospital—one of the last places where physical proximity is still possible, indeed, unavoidable. The virus diagrams the kind of social interaction that Michael championed in a vibrant city that had now nearly totally close down, the price of human contact having become too high.

On the evening when the horrible message arrived, the people of our London neighborhood, seeking some form of communion, stood each at their own window to clap for the medical workers like those who were by Michael’s side in his last days, risking their lives to try to save his and ours. Michael was our family friend—Alma, my daughter, was spoilt being his god-daughter—and so we were at our window, simultaneously sobbing, clapping, and hitting pots with wooden spoons, giving Michael the send-off we thought he’d appreciate. The rest of the mourning must be done in isolation—and my heart goes to Joan who cannot benefit from the proximity of those that loved them dearly.

Michael was also my architectural god-father. In a number of small but crucially corrective interventions, he put me on my path. He read my books when they were still drafts, giving comments, helping find titles and publishers. Only a few weeks ago he took the time to campaign for me when I was not allowed to travel to the United States, just as he often did for others less privileged…