Itinerating Research: Twenty Minutes in Manhattan by Michael Sorkin

PIN-UP

“Twenty Minutes in Manhattan opens on a quotidian note: ‘The walk from my apartment in Greenwich Village to my studio in Tribeca takes about 20 minutes, depending on the route and on whether I stop for a coffee and the Times.’ Described by his coffee-time newspaper as one of architecture’s most outspoken public intellectuals, Sorkin, who died from COVID-19 complications last year, was as much if not more renowned for his critical writing on and political engagement with the built environment than for his design work. Published in 2009, Twenty Minutes can be read as an intimate memoir traced through a thread of urban places along the author’s workday commute, but also as a Villager’s perspective on the locally nestled communities of lower Manhattan in the face of the vicissitudes of New York’s public life at the turn of the millennium.”