Michael Sorkin

I've always been partial to architectural mountains—from the Mayans to Bruno Taut—so I was delighted to see the hilly design that Beijing-based MAD Architects has proposed for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago.

A recent book by New Urbanist authors revives an old battle with Landscape Urbanism. Photo © Iwan Baan The High Line in New York, designed by James Corner Field Operations with Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is criticized by Andres Duany for being too expensive and over-designed. It's hard to keep up with the musical deck chairs in the disciplines these days. The boundaries of architecture, city planning, urban design, landscape architecture, sustainability, computation, and other fields are shifting like crazy, and one result is endless hybridization–green urbanism begets landscape urbanism, which begets ecological urbanism, which begets agrarian urbanism–each “ism” claiming

Emily Talen, Co-editor, Landscape Urbanism and its Discontents: Dissimulating the Sustainable City Readers: Michael Sorkin sounds tired, and who can blame him? This master of critique has made a career out of eviscerating buildings, architects, fellow writers, and anyone who rubs him the wrong way. How unexpected of him to now propose a why-can't-we-all-get-along harmony when so many are already lying dead on the Sorkin battlefield. We too would like to move on from this old and distracting debate. Unfortunately, while Mr. Sorkin tries to reinvent himself as the great peacekeeper, billions are wasted on efforts to ruralize the city.