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The Architecture of Omniscience: Codes, Grafts and Representation of the Work of Michael Sorkin

Part 1 Dissertation 1999
Alexander Franklin
Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) | UK
Ostensibly about the work of the NY-based writer and architect Michael Sorkin, this dissertation in fact addresses issues of much wider, even fundamental, concern to the definition and evaluation of architecture. A concern with the language, epistemology, production and communication of architecture runs through the dissertation – in short, questioning and exploring the ability of architecture to exist as a written as well as a drawn or constructed entity.
Alexander Franklin


Alexander Franklin's dissertation, "The Architecture of Omniscience: Codes, Grafts and Representation of the Work of Michael Sorkin" was clearly the best of the 120 Diploma disserations submitted at the Bartlett this year.

Ostensibly about the work of the NY-based writer and architect Michael Sorkin, Franklin's thesis in fact addresses issues of much wider, even fundamental, concern to the definition and evaluation of architecture. A concern with the language, epistemology, production and communication of architecture runs through the dissertation – in short, questioning and exploring the ability of architecture to exist as a written as well as a drawn or constructed entity.

Franklin's dissertation is also exquisitely presented, showing how the craft of the writer can be akin to that of the designer, fussing about details and graphics which relate to the whole.

1999
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