Michael Sorkin: What Architects Should Know | NDR.de – Culture – Book

Status: 06/25/2022 1:20 PM

Michael Sorkin’s latest book was recently published, in which he sums up all his ideas and knowledge in an unusual way: “250 Things Architects Should Know”.

by Annette Schneider

Which book! Small 13 x 18 cm, no info on the page, made of thick photo paper that feels heavy in the hand, it turns out to be a great fireworks of ideas for everyone who imagines a world worth living in as a world different from the current one!

marble texture

Michael Sorkin actually lists only 250 points: 250 short sentences—sometimes just a word or term—about culture, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and architecture, which, however, immediately stimulate associations, sparking forward and backward thinking. Each point seems to contain an entire book. These are the first three things you should know and know:

Feeling of cold marble under bare feet.
How to live with five strangers in a small room for six months.
In a lifeboat with the same strangers for a week.
Michael Sorkin: “250 Things Architects Should Know”

What does the city look like?

From the association of an Italian mansion with a marble floor to the fleeing people and their livelihood and survival status at Three Points. From the beauty of the world to its misery in 4 lines!

How far the reputation travels across the city.
How far hiss.
Michael Sorkin: “250 Things Architects Should Know”

Two short sentences – as you walk around the cities you know: their structure, the height of the buildings, the narrow streets. Did the call hit the walls instantly? Do you get lost in the traffic noise? Or is there an open space? Generous pedestrian streets? Do urban planners care about residents’ sense of well-being and security?

green urban planning

It’s about observing the prevailing wind directions, cooling cities and homes, and around the thousand-year-old building with mud. And according to Sorkin, you should also know:

The rate of sea level rise.
What is the comfortable stair gradient for a six year old child.
Laws related to the Code of Hammurabi.
Michael Sorkin: “250 Things Architects Should Know”

For decades, Michael Sorkin ran an international office for green urban planning in New York. He developed master plans for major projects all over the world, designed new cities in China, and was posthumously awarded the “Home as a Garden” award, a flexible, inexpensive, and carbon-negative divisible apartment building.

intellectual delight

With all this, he has reacted to the global change of cities into ecologically destructive and human-hate megacities whose privatized structures serve only global profit interests. Sorkin’s latest book is about all of this in its most intense form. It is permeated with the cosmopolitan, colossal and deeply humanistic knowledge of its author, who not only takes knowledge of foreign cultures as a matter of course, but also seems to have everyone in mind.

Construction workers wages.
Where does the material come from?
Particle pollution in Tianjin.
How to deal with trainees properly.
Michael Sorkin: “250 Things Architects Should Know”

Whether you read this volume front to back or back and forth, the thoughts, questions, and ideas it raises seem endless. In general, the reader is rarely challenged here, which makes the little book a great intellectual pleasure, which is further enhanced by the many funny, revealing, and exemplary architectural illustrations.