Some Assembly Required

(2001)
Michael Sorkin

Finished Reading: 11.2009

Architecture criticism can be boring, usually revealing the facts about a new building with some sort of back-story thrown in. Maybe a few academic concepts are dangled before the reader, but opinions offered are often eye rollers, the critic trying to make what should be largely subjective an objective diatribe. Michael Sorkin, however is witty and entertaining, and straight-up funny. Obviously he gives his opinion like the rest, but I find myself generally in agreement and in the end, entertained and impressed. I read Sorkin not for assembled bricks and steel but for his words, many of which require a dictionary.

Some Assembly Required is an engaging collection of essays and articles previously published throughout the 1990's, touching on various topics such as urban design, over-glorified architects, post-modern design failures, and even a surreal futuristic commentary on the evils of Walt Disney. Sorkin lays blame on the Mouse frequently, for his influence on the total destruction of good and wholesome architecture is evident throughout. The Disneyfication of America has left us in a fake, flat, stage-set cardboard world of no certain meaning, where the next things are made to look like the old things and are cherished because that's just how we roll. There is a strange nostalgia for non contextual styles in places where they don't belong.

Particularly noticeable is Sorkin's rebellious nature, writing as the one on the inside who hates that there even is an inside because it is so predictable. I picture him wearing black leather and riding a motorcycle to an architects party where everyone else shows up in black tie. He brings the beer, they bring the slide rules. He isn't afraid to tell the ugly kid that his face is ugly, and that his house is lame. He understands changing culture, and identifies clearly where architecture fails in each individual, unique, contextual cultural instance, meekly giving way to the many times copied (see xeroxed for older essays) and blindly disseminated global, banal, form letter of a culture that doesn't mean anything.

A good variety of places, buildings and individual architects are described and criticised to give the book a nice sampling of scales. I like good writing that attempts to kick the pilotis off the corner of a Corbusier knockoff now and then.