Some Assembly Required

✍ Scribed by Michael Sorkin

• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 264
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Michael Sorkin is widely hailed as one of the best architecture critics writing today. Iconoclastic and often controversial, he is a witty, entertaining, yet ultimately serious writer. In this new collection, Sorkin reviews the state of contemporary architecture and surveys the dramatic changes in the urban environment of the past decade. From New York to New Delhi, from Shanghai to Cairo, Sorkin offers a sweeping assessment of the impact of globalization, environmental degradation, electronic media, rapid growth, and the legacies of modernist planning. Whether laying out, manifesto-like, eleven necessary tasks for urban design, providing a fresh take on the Disneyfication of Times Square, grappling with sprawl, or blasting the nostalgic prescriptions of "new urbanist" communities (which he dubs "Reaganville"), Sorkin makes a compelling argument for an architecture and urbanism firmly grounded in both artistic expression and social purpose.

Michael Sorkin is principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio and professor of architecture and director of the graduate urban design program at New York's City College. He is the author of Giving Ground (with Joan Copjec, 1999), Wiggle (1998), Exquisite Corpse (1994), and Variations on a Theme Park (1991), and his writing has appeared in the Village Voice, Metropolis, the New York Times Magazine, and other publications.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 6
Introduction......Page 8
Part I. Cities/Places......Page 14
Eleven Tasks for Urban Design......Page 16
Branding Space......Page 23
Times Square: Status Quo Vadis......Page 26
Round and Round......Page 29
Cranes over TriBeCa......Page 34
Big Deal......Page 37
A Passage through India......Page 42
Instrumental Cities......Page 51
Containing Cairo......Page 58
Second Nature......Page 67
Millennium in Vegas......Page 72
Acting Urban......Page 77
Notes on Vibe......Page 83
Phoenix Rising......Page 91
Remembering the Future......Page 99
Part II. Architects/Buildings......Page 104
Animating Space......Page 106
Siza the Day......Page 117
The Borders of Islamic Architecture......Page 122
Filming Wright......Page 129
Inside the Biosphere......Page 134
Come and Getty......Page 139
Habitat and After......Page 144
MOR Is Less......Page 150
Far, Far AwAIA......Page 155
Amazing Archigram......Page 158
Admitting the Fold......Page 163
Forms of Attachment......Page 169
Airport 98......Page 174
No Sex Please, We're British......Page 180
How French Is It?......Page 186
Upstairs, Downstairs......Page 191
Part III. Misfits......Page 196
Container Riff......Page 198
Family Values......Page 204
The Second Greatest Generation......Page 222
War Is Swell......Page 228
Genius Loco: A Success Story......Page 244
Publication Information......Page 262