A Chat With Michael Sorkin
by Natalie Dubois
In light of Michael Sorkin’s recent passing, we are sharing this thoughtful profile by Class of 2019's, Natalie Dubois. This piece was originally submitted in December, 2018 as a profile for Adam Harrison Levy’s course The Art of the Interview, part two of Research & Writing I in the Fall Semester.
Michael Sorkin wants to know if I’m a drinking woman. “This would in general be about the right time,” he says. It’s the end of the work day, and a Friday. I’m in his office because I want to talk to him about design, climate change and criticism. But Michael doesn’t know it’s Friday. He’s been traveling too much. When I point out that it is indeed the end of the work week, he wryly tells me to “Keep it to yourself when you leave,” in reference to the room full of employees — of Michael Sorkin Studio, his architecture and urban design practice, and Terreform, his non-profit urban research studio — quietly working away beyond his door.
Michael Sorkin is one of America’s most celebrated designers and design thinkers. He was bestowed with the American Academy of Arts and Letters architecture award in 2010, and the ‘Design Mind’ National Design Award in 2013. A prolific writer, he has authored numerous books about architecture and cities, and was a longtime architecture critic for The Village Voice. He is also a distinguished educator. But with his laconic humor, Michael Sorkin may have missed his true calling as a comedian.
Michael is a realist. He understands that the work he publishes may mostly be read by people who already share his concerns regarding climate change, but it’s “Always good to add a voice to the choir, try to make a mighty noise.” Especially when the choir is “made up of the educated, connected and powerful.” He agrees that due to the environmental impacts of civilization, we may have backed ourselves into a corner; still he thinks that “you got to play the long game here, which may not be that long.” He suggests we persist in raising issues of sustainability, incrementally: “advance the discussion a few inches, whatever it is, but that’s fine.” And hopefully one can do this with the help of money. He sarcastically says that he keeps asking Victoria Newhouse, an architectural historian who belongs to the wealthy family who owns Condé Nast and other publishing properties, to make a charitable contribution to Terreform’s research — but “she already pledged this year.”
He tells me about his and his studio’s “small contribution” to the conversation of design and climate change, about how they have been exploring the idea of an autonomous New York City for a while now. They are studying what Michael calls the “metabolic” behaviors of the city: food supply, energy, water, waste, and so on. “There is some idea, some slightly anarchistic idea about self-responsibility, you know — that if the nation-states and multinationals are going to fuck up the planet, that maybe the cities can set their little piece of it straight.” Of the research, he adds “if there are any donors, any rich donors listening — it’s tax deductible.”
I ask Michael if he thinks there is a way, through writing, that we can think about the planet more holistically. “If only Al Gore had won the election, right? We wouldn’t be having any problems now,” he says. Of Trump: “He can disbelieve, but he can’t contravene the laws of physics.”
He’s not precious about language. I mention that some within the profession think we should move away from the word sustainability, which has been sapped of its meaning through overuse. “I couldn’t agree more or less, who cares. As long as you signal you’re in the territory: eco-, sustaino-, whatever else.”
I ask if his motivations to write about architecture and urbanism have changed over time. His chair squeaks as he shifts, thinking. He talks about the troubled relationship between the writing you’d like to do versus the writing you need to do for money. He does not want to be “the creature of somebody else’s agenda, however interesting.”
At 70, he’s wedded to print and books, and skeptical of social media. ”Persuasion takes a while. So a quick hit won’t really do it unless, you know, you can really convincingly portray the apocalypse in 30 seconds.” He’s wary of the popularity of technology as a cure for all problems, when sometimes lower tech will do.
Michael does think one should do good. Or at least, that’s what he thinks he meant when I read something he wrote back to him. He says we must interrogate whether our chosen profession contributes to human happiness. “Otherwise, you might as well have gone to medical school…save a few lives.”
When I ask him for advice, as someone hoping to write about design and climate change, he tells me: “What should I say, you know? Marry money.”
I suppose it’s unsurprising that someone who practices design at all scales (from street furniture to buildings to the master planning of cities), who writes and publishes, and who teaches design, has the general opinion that in the face of overwhelmingly depressing news about the state of the planet, we should just keep plugging away, in any and every small way that we can. It’s what he does. He has his eye on the big picture. Cecilia Fagel, who works with Michael at Terreform, explained it to me this way. She said that when she sees bad design, she thinks to herself, “it sucks.” But when Michael sees bad design, he thinks, “it sucks — but in a context.”
The SVA MA in Design Research, Writing and Criticism is a one-year, intensive MA program well suited to the circumstances of established professionals, in addition to graduates wishing to continue their studies at an advanced level. In providing the research tools and journalistic techniques for researching, analyzing, and critically interpreting design, the program amply prepares its graduates for future-facing careers in research-driven design practices and institutions, in journalism and publishing, or for continued studies in a design-related subject.
Please contact us for more information at designresearch@sva.edu.
