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Pamphlet Architecture
Pamphlet Architecture 22: Other Plans: University of Chicago Studies, 1998-2000
Architect, writer, teacher--and agent provocateur--Michael Sorkin was commissioned by the University of Chicago in 1998 to produce an "alternative" master plan for its architectural revitalization. His studio had barely begun before they were dropped from the process. In the capacity of concerned alumnus, however, Sorkin and his group soldiered on and, in Pamphlet Architecture 22, present their background studies and proposed schemes, shown here in models and colorful drawings.This critical analysis of the official plans adopted by the University juxtaposed against Sorkin's "Other Plans" provides concrete evidence of his visionary ideals and what remarkable architecture and planning mean today.
- GenresArchitectureNonfiction
95 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
2 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
About the author
Michael Sorkin
60Ìýbooks35ÌýfollowersMichael Sorkin (1948, Washington, D.C.- March 2020, New York) was an American architectural critic and author of several hundred articles in a wide range of both professional and general publications. He was the Principal of Michael Sorkin Studio in New York City, a design practice devoted to both practical and theoretical projects at all scales, with special interest in sustainable urban environments/green city architecture. He was also Chair of the Institute for Urban Design, a non-profit organization that provides a forum for debate over critical issues in contemporary urban planning, development and design.
From 1993 to 2000 he was Professor of Urbanism and Director of the Institute of Urbanism at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He has been a professor at numerous schools of architecture including the Architectural Association, the Aarhus School of Architecture, Cooper Union, Carleton, Columbia, Yale (holding both the Davenport and Bishop Chairs), Harvard and Cornell (the Gensler Chair). He is currently Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York.
Dedicated to urbanism as both an artistic practice and a medium for social amelioration, Sorkin has conducted studios in such stressed environments as Jerusalem, Nicosia, Johannesburg, Havana, Cairo, Kumasi, Hanoi, Nueva Loja (Ecuador) and Wuhan (China). In 2005 -2006, he directed studio projects for the post-Katrina reconstruction of Biloxi and New Orleans.
From 1993 to 2000 he was Professor of Urbanism and Director of the Institute of Urbanism at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He has been a professor at numerous schools of architecture including the Architectural Association, the Aarhus School of Architecture, Cooper Union, Carleton, Columbia, Yale (holding both the Davenport and Bishop Chairs), Harvard and Cornell (the Gensler Chair). He is currently Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York.
Dedicated to urbanism as both an artistic practice and a medium for social amelioration, Sorkin has conducted studios in such stressed environments as Jerusalem, Nicosia, Johannesburg, Havana, Cairo, Kumasi, Hanoi, Nueva Loja (Ecuador) and Wuhan (China). In 2005 -2006, he directed studio projects for the post-Katrina reconstruction of Biloxi and New Orleans.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 13, 2018
Honestly, it's not that great of a book. Much of the book is way, way too abstract although it has good pictures like most architecture books. However, the topic of the book is of great interest to me, and I have to agree with the author's point of view. Sorkin ( a U of C grad) was asked to come up with a master plan for the University of Chicago campus in the late 1990's. I think that must have been pre-Palevsky, and it sounds like Woodward Court was still standing. (Although it was obviously after Regenstein was built, [which he dislikes and I love]). So then they fired him and went on their merry way putting up a perfectly incoherent set of very big, discordant buildings around the jewel of the gothic quad. Sorkin is quirky, and he has many amusing idiosyncratic ideas, such as cutting Regenstein in half and setting up a water taxi to Evanston, but I think he had a good vision for how to make the U of C campus beautiful and usable and supportive to the expanding "the life of the mind", and I'm sad the University didn't listen.
February 15, 2009
Sorkin makes some reasonable complaints about the way the University has developed since Henry Ives Cobb's original master plan. These complaints are the following:
1. The coherence of the original quads has not been maintained in University building north of 57th street or south of the Midway.
2. Recent University building has focused on monumental structures: the B-school and the new gym are two examples. Monumentality does not produce of the kind of intimacy and multi-use space that the old quads do.
3. The Midway hasn't been productively used.
4. There is no southern face of the University, just the "Dresden-like" empty lots and fences of Woodlawn.
5. 55th street is a wasteland.
And so on.
I agree most with complaints 5 and 3. The attempt to revive some commercial life on 55th street with Lucky Strike seems like a total failure. There are unbelievable pictures of what 55th street was like before it's "renewal" in the 50s, full of pedestrians and storefronts. The Midway seems like a total waste of space, a glorified parking lot. Sorkin reproduces plans of the Midway during the Chicago World's Exposition, where it contains a "bedouin encampment", a "Vienna cafe", an "Ostrich farm", a "Captive Balloon", a "Moorish Palace", a "Japanese Bazaar", and a panorama of the "Bernese Alps", among other things. A captive balloon would certainly liven up today's Midway.
I like some of Sorkin's ideas in his new master plan a lot, especially the idea to turn student housing into collections of smaller and larger "houses" consisting of a variety of different kinds of buildings, and his proposal to scatter athletic facilities around (squash courts in one place, b-ball courts somewhere else) rather than concentrate them in one central, enormous facility. And I really like his proposal to revive the World's Expo midway as waterway, including punts and water-taxis that might take one from the Midway to the lake and on to the Gleacher Center!
Other proposals seem less convincing. He suggests that the B-school should have been built south of the Midway to give the southern side of campus some additional weight. Audacious, but the current b-school site is pretty successful. And his plan to split the Regenstein in half, bridging the sides with an airport-concouse-like "Omnipaideum" seems ill-advised.
But overall the criticisms are reasonable and they leave you wishing the development of the University was less piecemeal.
1. The coherence of the original quads has not been maintained in University building north of 57th street or south of the Midway.
2. Recent University building has focused on monumental structures: the B-school and the new gym are two examples. Monumentality does not produce of the kind of intimacy and multi-use space that the old quads do.
3. The Midway hasn't been productively used.
4. There is no southern face of the University, just the "Dresden-like" empty lots and fences of Woodlawn.
5. 55th street is a wasteland.
And so on.
I agree most with complaints 5 and 3. The attempt to revive some commercial life on 55th street with Lucky Strike seems like a total failure. There are unbelievable pictures of what 55th street was like before it's "renewal" in the 50s, full of pedestrians and storefronts. The Midway seems like a total waste of space, a glorified parking lot. Sorkin reproduces plans of the Midway during the Chicago World's Exposition, where it contains a "bedouin encampment", a "Vienna cafe", an "Ostrich farm", a "Captive Balloon", a "Moorish Palace", a "Japanese Bazaar", and a panorama of the "Bernese Alps", among other things. A captive balloon would certainly liven up today's Midway.
I like some of Sorkin's ideas in his new master plan a lot, especially the idea to turn student housing into collections of smaller and larger "houses" consisting of a variety of different kinds of buildings, and his proposal to scatter athletic facilities around (squash courts in one place, b-ball courts somewhere else) rather than concentrate them in one central, enormous facility. And I really like his proposal to revive the World's Expo midway as waterway, including punts and water-taxis that might take one from the Midway to the lake and on to the Gleacher Center!
Other proposals seem less convincing. He suggests that the B-school should have been built south of the Midway to give the southern side of campus some additional weight. Audacious, but the current b-school site is pretty successful. And his plan to split the Regenstein in half, bridging the sides with an airport-concouse-like "Omnipaideum" seems ill-advised.
But overall the criticisms are reasonable and they leave you wishing the development of the University was less piecemeal.
July 22, 2015
It made me excited for going to another university but one of the least interesting of the series (though I'm reading it without any background in architecture so I really shouldn't be the person to judge).
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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