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All Over the Map: Writing on Buildings and Cities
Author(s): Michael Sorkin (Author)
- Publisher: Verso Books
- Publication Date: February 12, 2013
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 416 pages
- ISBN-10: 1844672204
- ISBN-13: 9781844672202
Book Description
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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Easily one of the best architecture critics around … Sorkin is a flaneur with a sense of public purpose.”—Chris Hall, Guardian
“America’s most invigorating writer on architecture.”—
Observer“Sorkin is one of the most intelligent writers on architecture today.”—
Library Journal“Sorkin is a formidable opponent of the banal, the ugly, the stupid and the vapidly posturing which, he argues, are all around us.”—
Publishers Weekly“[A]n intense mediation on the role of democracy in architecture, the role of the critic in that democracy and the dilemmas facing an architect who wants to make a difference (by working with that democracy) but needs to make a living (by pleasing an economic and political elite) … One of the most impressive collections of contemporary criticism you could read.”—
Art Review“
All Over the Map is a pleasure to read”—Times Literary SupplementAbout the Author
Michael Sorkin is an award-winning architect and Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the City College of New York. His books include The Next Jerusalem, After the World Trade Center, Twenty Minutes in Manhattan and All Over the Map.
