All Over the Map

Writing on Buildings and Cities

Michael Sorkin

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781844672202
• eBook ISBN:
  9781781684689
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Criticism

All Over the Map is an urgent response to the radical changes in contemporary architecture and the built environment witnessed in the twenty-first century. Characteristically polemic, incisive and energetic, these essays explore pressing questions of architectural and urban design, and critical issues of public space and participation. From New York to New Orleans, the Amazon to Jerusalem, Sorkin brings a critical eye to bear on a sweeping range of subjects.

Whether castigating the sorry performance of the architectural avant-garde, considering the nature of place in globalized culture, or providing mock instructions for entering a high-security environment, these writings make a powerful and provocative case for architecture and urban design to re-engage with the lives and societies from which they have become increasingly detached.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Second-Greatest Generation
• 2 Herb’s Content
• 3 Notes on a Tennessee Town
• 4 After the Fall
• 5 What Remains
• 6 First Response
• 7 The Center Cannot Hold
• 8 Six Months
• 9 Thinking Inside the Box
• 10 The Dimensions of Aura
• 11 The World Peace Dome
• 12 The Lotus
• 13 Security
• 14 A Brief for Reconstruction
• 15 Riff on Rem
• 16 Herbert’s List
• 17 Splitsville, USA: Why the Practice and Teaching of Urban Design Is Coming Apart
• 18 Urbanism Is Politics
• 19 On SITE
• 20 Who Decides?
• 21 No Island Is an Island
• 22 Obstructed Vision
• 23 Remembering Doug Michels
• 24 The Avant-Garde in Time of War
• 25 And Then There Were Two
• 26 Density Noodle
• 27 Caveat Competitor
• 28 (S)Truth and Consequences
• 29 Entering the Building
• 30 Urban Warfare: A Tour of the Battlefield
• 31 Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Cars, Dolphins, and Architecture
• 32 Displacement
• 33 Crippled in the City
• 34 The Limits of Tolerance
• 35 When Good Architects Design Bad Buildings
• 36 Advice to Critics
• 37 Liberty Square
• 38 Bush in Space
• 39 Architecture and Revolution
• 40 What Can You Say About The Pritzker?
• 41 A Trip to Tijuana
• 42 Seven Chairs
• 43 A Letter to Bob
• 44 Into the Woods
• 45 Cardinal Points
• 46 My Last Philippic
• 47 Gulf States
• 48 People Who Live in Urban Glass Houses
• 49 Ten Better Places for a Football Stadium
• 50 Finding a Dramatic Home for a Political Football
• 51 The Great Mall of New York
• 52 The Bounding Mayne
• 53 Drowning in the Gulf Again
• 54 Sincerely, Jane Jacobs
• 55 Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?
• 56 Stuyvesant Town
• 57 How I Invented Asia
• 58 Everybody’s a Critic!
• 59 Go Down Moses!
• 60 The Jungle Urban: Welcome to Petropolis
• 61 Trumped Again
• 62 Asian Alterity: What’s the Diference?
• 63 The End(s) of Urban Design
• 64 Big Brother Is Charging You
• 65 West Side Story
• 66 An Architectural Tourist on Omotesando
• 67 Learning from the Hutong of Beijing and Lilong of Shanghai
• 68 Covering the Territory: Three Films by Amos Gitai
• 69 Bucky and Me
• 70 Three Freedoms
• 71 The Plot against Architecture
• 72 A Letter to President Obama
• 73 A Cut through the City
• 74 Trouble in Paradise
• 75 Discipline and Punish
• 76 Eutopia Now!
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright
• Books by Michael Sorkin