Michael Sorkin Lecture

Michael Sorkin lectured about his work today. It was pretty much a repeat of a lecture he gave last Spring in Portland. Except this time he did not spend the first half of the lecture literally reading an essay outloud. I think Sorkin speaks very intelligently about urbanism. His values and intentions as he describes them are honorable; he believes in self-sufficient cities, sustainble techniques, centers, nodes, edges and formal complexity. It's hard to argue with much of that. But then the work seems to have little to do with these things. At best I found it to be a diagrammatic representation of these concepts. Many of the Danes were actually quite upset! Some of the people I spoke with found the work to be completely formal in nature and much too disconnected from the realities of city-making. The way I see it, Sorkin's pen is better suited for making words than lines.


The real highlight of the lecture came beforehand. I walked Clare Cooper Marcus to the lecture from the harbor bus stop and we talked for about 20 minutes about my project. She suggested some projects to check out, people to talk to and books to find. I can't wait to dive into some case studies of these shared spaces! In the meantime, I am searching for other interesting typologies. As it stands now, I'm also looking at woonerf streets and allotment gardens....