Michael David Sorkin –an American architectural and urban critic, designer, and educator – died on March 26, 2020 from Covid-19.
He was considered to be "one of architecture’s most outspoken public intellectuals," a polemical voice in contemporary culture and the design of urban places at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Sorkin first rose to prominence as an architectural critic for the Village Voice in New York City, a post which he held for a decade throughout the 1980s. In the ensuing years, he taught at prominent universities around the world, practiced through his eponymous firm, established a nonprofit book press, and directed the urban design program at the City College of New York. He died at age 71 due to complications brought on by COVID-19.
Sorkin was born in Washington, D.C. in 1948. He was an architect and urbanist whose practice spanned design, planning, criticism, and teaching. Sorkin received a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1969, and a masters in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.Arch '74). Sorkin also held a master's degree in English from Columbia University (MA '70). He was founding principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio, a New York-based global design practice with special interests in urban planning, urban design and green urbanism.
Sorkin died on March 26, 2020, from complications brought on by COVID-19 in Manhattan. His death was among the design profession's most prominent losses during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic — making news internationally and met with an outpouring of tributes and obituaries in mainstream, leftist, and architectural media.