Jim Brown reviewed Exquisite corpse by Michael Sorkin
Beautiful Snark
I can't believe that a book of essays about architecture is one of my favorite books of all time, but here we are. You don't have to know anything about New York City or architecture to enjoy these essays.
Sorkin was the architectural critic of the Village Voice for years, and this is a collection of his essays published there (and some that were published elsewhere). The main villain in this book is architect Phillip Johnson, who Sorkin absolutely despises. It's hilarious to read each and every take-down of Johnson in this book.
The best essay in the whole collection is "Dwelling Machines," which appeared in Design Quarterly in 1987. It's a discussion of how the design of homes has "diversified since the time the world became rational, sometime during the 18th century when the Enlightenment pulled the cord that turned on modernism's incandescent bulb." (188)
Here's one of my …
I can't believe that a book of essays about architecture is one of my favorite books of all time, but here we are. You don't have to know anything about New York City or architecture to enjoy these essays.
Sorkin was the architectural critic of the Village Voice for years, and this is a collection of his essays published there (and some that were published elsewhere). The main villain in this book is architect Phillip Johnson, who Sorkin absolutely despises. It's hilarious to read each and every take-down of Johnson in this book.
The best essay in the whole collection is "Dwelling Machines," which appeared in Design Quarterly in 1987. It's a discussion of how the design of homes has "diversified since the time the world became rational, sometime during the 18th century when the Enlightenment pulled the cord that turned on modernism's incandescent bulb." (188)
Here's one of my favorite sentences, from an essay that describes the Portman Hotel (aka the Marriott Marquis), which features a large tower of elevators inside. Here's Sorkin's take on that tower:
"What we have here is, in effect, a skyscraper indoors, in captivity, like King Kong!...But Portman blows it, doesn't play up the tower-ness of the tower. By stepping back the section of his atrium as it rises, he obscures his soaring shaft at its culmination, its most seminal point, its moment of entry into the disc of the as-yet-unopened surmounting revolving restaurant. Just goes to prove, though: size isn't everything." (140)