Architect Michael Sorkin to Give Public Lecture
April 9, 2008
2007 Kossman Juror and renowned architect, critic, and principal and founder of the Michael Sorkin Studio, Michael Sorkin will give a free public lecture at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 16, in the Palmer Lipcon Auditorium, Palmer Museum of Art, on the Penn State University Park campus. The lecture is open to the public and AIA/CEU credits are available. This is the final lecture of the 2007-2008 Architecture Lecture Series.
The Michael Sorkin Studio is a New York based architectural practice devoted to both practical and theoretical projects at all scales with a special interest in the city and in green architecture. Recent projects include planning and design for a highly sustainable 5000-unit community in Penang, Malaysia, master planning for Hamburg, Visselhoevede, Leipzig, and Schwerin, Germany, planning for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, urban design in Leeds, England, campus planning at the University of Chicago and CCNY, studies of the Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts, housing design in Far Rockaway, Vienna, and Miami, a resort in the desert of Abu Dhabi, and a park in Queens, New York. The Sorkin Studio is active in research in issues of urban morphology, sustainability, and equity and has been the recipient of numerous awards from, among others, Progressive Architecture, ID, and the New York AIA.
Sorkin is the director of the Graduate Urban Design Program at the City College of New York. From 1993 to 2000 he was Professor of Urbanism and Director of the Institute of Urbanism at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Previously, Sorkin has been professor at numerous schools of architecture including the Architectural Association, Cooper Union (for ten years), Columbia, Yale (holding both Davenport and Bishop Chairs), Harvard, Cornell (Gensler Chair), Nebraska (Hyde Chair), Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas, Michigan (Saarinen Chair) and Minnesota. In 2005 -2006, Sorkin directed studio projects for the post-Katrina reconstruction of Biloxi and New Orleans. Sorkin lectures widely and is the author of many articles in a wide range of both professional and general publications and is currently contributing editor at Architectural Record and Metropolis. For ten years, he was the architecture critic of The Village Voice. His books include Variations on A Theme Park, Exquisite Corpse, Local Code, Giving Ground (edited with Joan Copjec), Wiggle (a monograph of the studio's work), Some Assembly Required, Other Plans, The Next Jerusalem, After The Trade Center (edited with Sharon Zukin), Starting From Zero, Analyzing Ambasz, and Against the Wall.
Contact: Lisa Iulo, ldi1@psu.edu