Maroš Krivý
Publications, Talks, Exhibitions, About

Maroš Krivý is an urbanist and historian with interests in architecture, urbanism and the environment in the postwar and post-Cold War periods. His research examines the interplay between design, power and knowledge in areas ranging from mass housing to urban nature and cybernetic urbanism.

One stream of Krivý’s work examines the architecture of state-socialist mass housing as a site of imagination, stigmatization and heritage work. Spanning architectural history and cultural geography, this scholarship focuses on former Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European countries to trace the expectations, institutions and spaces of socialist urbanism.

• Representative publication: Maroš Krivý, “Faceless Concrete Monsters, c. 1990,” in K. Cupers, H. Mattsson and C. Gabrielsson (Eds.), Neoliberalism on the Ground: Architecture and Transformation from the 1960s to the Present, pp. 89–109 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020)

Another research strand involves imaginaries of nature and culture in urbanism. His dissertation and postdoctoral research examined the interplay between post-industrial aesthetics, anti-planning discourses and neoliberal urbanism in turn-of-the-century Finland and Estonia.

• Representative publication: Maroš Krivý, “‘Post-apocalyptic Wasteland’ or ‘Digital Ecosystem’? Postsocialist Ecological Imaginaries in Tallinn, Estonia,” Geoforum 26 (2021), 233–243

Krivý’s most recent focus is a history of the idea of indeterminacy in contemporary urban professions. A particular interest lies in the ideological work of complexity theory in relation to environmental design, smart cities and other expert-based approaches to urban change.

• Representative publication: Maroš Krivý, “Urbanists in the Smart City: Sidewalks, Sidewalk Labs and the Limits to ‘Complexity’,” in D. Mackinnon, R. Burns and V. Fast (Eds.), Digital (In)justice in the Smart City (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023)

Krivý’s current book project, with the working title Urbanism at the End of History, examines how urban experts responded to global capitalism with naturalistic explanations, and forgot about injustice along the way. Research on this project is supported through Marie Skłodowska-Curie  Fellowship.

Maroš Krivý is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (2022–2024) and Professor of Urban Studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts. He was Research Associate at the University of Cambridge (2016–2018; ERC Advanced Grant “Rethinking Urban Nature”).

mkrivy (at) cca.qc.ca

Publications

2023

• with Matthew Gandy, “Zany Beetroot: Architecture, Autopoiesis, and the Spatial Formations of Late Capital,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 41, 6 (2023): 1058–1074.
• “Digital Ecosystem: The Journey of a Metaphor,“ Digital Geography and Society 5, 100057 (2023): 1–9.

• “Urbanists in the Smart City: Sidewalks, Sidewalk Labs and the Limits to ‘Complexity’,” in D. Mackinnon, R. Burns and V. Fast (Eds.), Digital (In)justice in the Smart City (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023)
• “The Socialist Past is a Foreign Country: Architecture, Heritage and Postsocialism in Eastern Europe,” in N. Bobic and F. Haghighi (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics, Volume I, pp.  285–300 (London: Routledge, 2023)

2022

• “Reclaiming Socialist Space, Caricaturing Socialism? Urban Interventions and the Cleansing of Political Content in State-Socialist Public Housing After 2008,” Antipode 54 (2022), 503–525

2021

• “‘Post-apocalyptic Wasteland’ or ‘Digital Ecosystem’? Postsocialist Ecological Imaginaries in Tallinn, Estonia,” Geoforum 26 (2021), 233–243
• “Platform Urbanism and Sociotechnical Imaginaries,” “Platform: Taking the Metaphor Seriously” and “Socialist Cybernetics” in Platform Urbanism and Its Discontent, ed. Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer, pp. 157–170 (Amsterdam: nai010, 2021)

2020

• “The Unbearable Lightness of ‘Complexity’,” Perspecta 53: Onus (2020), 59–69
• “Platform Urbanism and Knowledge-Power,” in M. Hodson et al. (Eds.), Urban  Platforms and the Future City: Transformations in Infrastructure, Governance, Knowledge, and Everyday Life, pp. 164–176 (London: Routledge, 2020)
• “Tracing the Urban Pastoral in Tallinn: Leo Marx, Karl Marx, and Urban Political Aesthetics,” in M. Gandy and S. Jasper (Eds.), The Botanical City, pp. 243–252 (Berlin: Jovis, 2020)
• “Mesto je viac než verejné priestranstvá” [The city is more than life between buildings], in L. Zein and E. Málková (Eds.), Dostupné spekulace, pp. 6–9 (Prague: VI PER, 2020) [Interview with the author by L. Zein]
• with L. Ma, “Limity obyvatelného města: od Homo sapiens k Homo cappuccino,” in L. Zein and E. Málková (Eds.), Dostupné spekulace, pp. 48–55 (Prague: VI PER, 2020)
• “Faceless Concrete Monsters, c. 1990,” in K. Cupers, H. Mattsson and C. Gabrielsson (Eds.), Neoliberalism on the Ground: Architecture and Transformation from the 1960s to the Present (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020)

2019

• with K. Grove, L. Rickards, G. Schliwa, S. Collier, S. Cox, M. Gandy, “Interventions on Design and Political Geography,” Political Geography 74 (2019)

• “The Smart and the Ruined: Notes on the New Social Factory,” Thresholds 47 (2019), 75–90
• “Automation or Meaning? Socialism, Humanism and Cybernetics in Etarea,” Architectural Histories 7, 1 (2019), 1–17
• “Humanizing the Living Environment and the Late Socialist Theory of Architecture,” in V. Kulić (Ed.), Second World Postmodernisms: Architecture and Society under Late Socialism, pp. 33–46 (London: Bloomsbury, 2019)

2018

• with S. Hochhäusl, T. Lange, et al., “Architecture and the Environment,” Architectural Histories 6, 1 (2018), 1–20
• “Towards a Critique of Cybernetic Urbanism: The Smart City and the Society of Control,” Planning Theory 17, 1 (2018), 8–30
• with L. Ma (2018), “The Limits of the Livable City: From Homo Sapiens to Homo Cappuccino,” Avery Review 30 (2018), online
• with L. Ma (2018), “Los límites de la ciudad habitable: del Homo sapiens al Homo capuchino,” Revista PLOT 45 (2018), 13–19
• “Cells and Cities: The Neo-Vitalist Impulse in Contemporary Urbanism,” Scapegoat: Architecture, Landscape, Political Economy 11 (2018), 22–39
• “Becoming-Platform, the Urban, and the City,” Mediapolis 4, 3 (2018), online
• “We Are All Platform Urbanists, but Not All in the Same Way,” Mediapolis 4, 3 (2018), online

2017

• “Quality of Life or Life-In-Truth? A Late-Socialist Critique of Housing Estates in Czechoslovakia,” in Á. Moravánszky and T. Lange (Eds.), Re-Framing Identities. Architecture's Turn to History, 1970-1990. East West Central. Re-Building Europe 1950-1990, Vol. 3, pp. 303–318 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2017)

2016

• “Postmodernism or Socialist Realism? the Architecture of Housing Estates in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 75, 1 (2016), 74–101
• “From mining to data mining,” in K. Bērziņš et al. (Eds.), Baltic Atlas, pp. 191–202 (Berlin: Sternberg Press)
• “On housing [interview with Owen Hatherley],” Ehituskunst: Investigations in Architecture and Theory, 57 (2016), 68–81
• “Parametricist Architecture, Smart Cities, and the Politics of Consensus,” Ehituskunst: Investigations in Architecture and Theory, 57 (2016), 22–45

2015

• “Greyness and Colour Desires: The Chromatic Politics of the Panelák in Late-Socialist and Postsocialist Czechoslovakia,” Journal of Architecture 20, 5 (2015), 765–802

2013

• “Don’t Plan! The Use of the Notion of “Culture” in Transforming Obsolete Industrial Space,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies 37, 5 (2013), 1724–1746
• with T. Kaminer, “Introduction: The participatory turn in urbanism,” Footprint (Delft School of Design Journal) 7, 2 (2013), 1–6
• “Participation, housing, and the question of ‘good architecture’,” Footprint (Delft School of Design Journal) 7, 2 (2013), 163–172

2012

• “Obsolete Industrial Space in the Expanded Field,” in R. Morrow and  M.G. Abdelmonem (Eds.), Peripheries: Critical Studies in Architectural Humanities, pp. 101–114 (Routledge, London: 2012)

2011

• “Speculative redevelopment and conservation: The signifying role of architecture,” City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 15, 1 (2011), 42–62
• with E. Mendieta, A. Richter and B. Catterall, “On ‘the urbanism of nothing’,” City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 15, 2 (2011), 241−249

2010

• “Industrial architecture and negativity: The aesthetics of architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher,” Journal of Architecture 15, 6 (2011), 827–852

Exhibitions (selected)

• The Baltic Material Assemblies (AA and RIBA, London, 1–25 Mar 2018)
• Baltic Pavilion: Operative Archive, Design and Architecture Gallery, Tallinn (10–19 Mar 2017)
• Baltic Pavilion, Venice Biennale of Architecture, Venice (28 May–27 Nov 2016)
• I Looked Into the Walls and Saw... (ISFAG, Tallinn (23 Oct–2 Nov 2014)
• Alternativa Festival “Till Tomorrow! Ideologies of City Planning and the Tactics of Dwelling,” Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk (24 May–6 Oct 2013)
• Hobusepea Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia (20 Mar–1 Apr 2013)
• Sense of Place, BOZAR, Brussels, Belgium (14 June–16 Sep 2012)

Talks

2022

• Environment: The Career of a Concept / SAH 75th Meeting (Pittsburgh) [paper session, co-organized with H. Mattsson]
• New Approaches to Urban Nature: Landscapes, Practices, Ideas / AAG Annual Meeting (online) [paper session and panel discussion, co-organized with S. Jasper]
• Urban Professionals and Ecological Imaginaries / AAG Annual Meeting (online)
• Learning from Socialism: Alternative Modernities in the Second World (Iowa State University)[symposium contribution]

2021

• Ian McHarg’s Pardisan (1975–9) and the Limits to Ecological Urbanism / Histories of Urban Design (ETH Zürich)
• Grey Today, Colourful Tomorrow. Colours and Socialism / Toward a History of Modern Colour (University of Cambridge)
• Seeing Like a Systems Psychologist: On Gorazd Čelechovský’s Urbanism / SAH 74th Meeting (online)
• Rethinking Urban Wastelands: The Case of Tallinn (Department of Geography, Humboldt University) [guest lecture]

2020

• Periodizing the 1990s: Architecture and Complexity (University of Virginia School of Architecture)[guest lecture]
• A Real Estate Aesthetic: Prague’s Dancing House (Foundation and Center for Contemporary Arts, Prague) [public lecture]

2019

• Financialization, Revitalization, New Municipalism? The Case of Oberschöneweide, Berlin / AHRA, Architecture and Collective Life (Dundee, 21–23 Nov 2019)
  
• “Boom, Boom, Boom”: Socialist Housing and its Denunciation / Mestoláska (Košice, 28 Oct 2019)
  
• Automation or Meaning? Socialism, Humanism and Cybernetics in Etarea (KTH Stockholm, 9 Oct 2019)
• Counter-tour of “Our Happy Life” (CCA Montreal, 3 Oct 2019)
• “Boom, Boom, Boom”: Socialist Housing and its Denunciation (German Historical Institute, Warsaw, 12–14 September 2019)
  
• Postmodernism and Neo-Liberalism / The Virginia Tech Rome Program (Rome, 14–18 Jun 2019)
  
• Technologies of Mind and Body in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc (University of Nottingham, 17–18 May 2019)
• The Geopolitical Aesthetics of Postmodernism / SAH 72^nd Meeting (Providence, 24–28 Apr 2019) [paper session, co-organized with L.-C. Szacka]
• Post-Extractive Landscapes: Environments of Revitalization / SAH 72^nd Meeting (Providence, 24–28 Apr 2019) [panel discussion, co-organized with J. Ferng, L. Jacobi, A. Bierig, and S. Hochhäusl]
• Changing Welfare (KU/AARCH/KADK, Copenhagen, 9–10 Apr 2019) [with N. Jørgensen]
• Urban Platforms and the Future City: Transformations in Infrastructure, Governance, Knowledge, and Everyday Life (Manchester Urban Institute, 28 Feb–1 Mar 2019)

2018

• Welfare and the Recent Past (AHO, Oslo, 1–2 Oct 2018)
  
• Digital Cultures: Knowledge/Culture/Technology (Leuphana University of Lüneburg, 19–22 Sep 2018)
  
• The Political Aesthetics of Postmodernism: Between Late Socialism and Late Capitalism / EAHN 5th Meeting. (Tallinn, 13–16 Jun 2018). [paper session, co-organized with L.-C. Szacka]
• Rethinking Urban Nature / AAG Annual Meeting (New Orleans, 10–14 Apr 2018) 
• Designing Urban Futures? Eco-Cybernetics, or, How to Govern the Anthropocene / AAG Annual Meeting (New Orleans, 10–14 Apr 2018) [panel session, co-organized with K. Grove]

• Structural Instabilities (PennDesign, Philadelphia, 5–6 April 2018)

• The Baltic Material Assemblies: Geologies and Infrastructures (Architectural Association, 3 Mar 2018)
• Architecture, Geo-Politics and Scientific Knowledge (University of Cambridge, 24 Jan 2018) [workshop, co-organized with S. Jasper.]
• Designing Geopolitics (University of Basel, 20 Jan 2018)

2017

• CCA/Mellon seminar “Architecture and/for the Environment” (CCA Montreal, 13–15 Jul 2017)
  
• Mapping, Mercator and Modernity: The Impact of the Digital (Duisburg-Essen University, 25–26 Apr 2017)
  
• Architectures, Natures & Data: The Politics of Environments (Estonian Academy of Arts and Cambridge University, Tallinn, 20–22 Apr 2017) [international conference organized by the author]
  
• Design, Biopolitics, and Resilience in a Complex World / AAG Annual Meeting (Boston, 5–9 Apr 2017)
  
• Imagining Infrastructures: Space, Subject, and Affect (University of Cambridge, 8 Mar 2017)
  

2016

• Invited lecture (Faculty of Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava, 29 Nov 2016)
  
• Geography and Neovitalism (University of Cambridge, 23 Nov 2016)
  
• Invited lecture, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague (20 Apr 2016)
  
• The Architecture of Deregulations. Postmodernism, Politics, and the Built Environment in Europe (1975–1995) (KTH School of Architecture and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 10–12 Mar 2016)
• “Architecture and Environment” interest group inaugural meeting / EAHN 4th Meeting (Dublin, 2–4 June 2016)

2015

• AHRA Annual Meeting, “This Thing Called Theory” (Leeds, 19–21 Nov 2015)
• Invited lecture (Faculty of Architecture, Aalto University, Helsinki, 12 Nov 2015)
• Berlin – Prague: Living Utopias? “New” Housing Concepts in Change (bauhaus re use, Berlin, 10 Nov 2015)
• Wohnungsfrage Academy: The Housing System ​(Berlin, 22–25 Oct 2015)
• EAHN Meeting (Belgrade, 14–17 Oct 2015)
• East West Central 03: Re-Framing Identities. Architecture’s Turn to History, 1970–1990 (gta ETH Zürich, 10–12 Sep 2015)
• Politics of Beauty in Urban Landscapes / NGM 6th Meeting (Tallinn, 15–19 June) [paper session co-organized with A. Marzecová and W. Bigell]
• Architecture: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, 17–18 Apr 2015) [conference co-organized with K. Kljavin]
• Invited lecture, seminar series “Urgencies” (New Academy/Kultuurisauna, Helsinki, 9 Mar 2015)

2014

• Invited lecture (Faculty of Social Sciences, Masaryk University, Brno, 3 Jun 2014)
• Socialist and Post-socialist Urbanizations: Architecture, Land and Property Rights (Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, 8–11 May 2014). [international conference co-organized with T. Tuvikene]
• Invited lecture (Edinburgh School of Architecture, 2 Apr 2014)

2013

• Between Architecture of War and Military Urbanism (Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, 26–27 Apr 2013) [international conference co-organized with P. Lehtovuori]
• Governing the Built Environment: Creativity, Culture and Design. AAG Annual Meeting (Los Angeles, 9–13 Apr 2013) [paper session organized by the author]
• Participation Between Consensus-making and Contestation. ISA-RC21 Meeting (Berlin, 29–31 Aug 2013) [paper session co-organized with C. Hoelzl and J. Dohnke]
• NGM 5th Meeting (Reykjavík, 11–14 June 2013)

2012

• AAG Annual Meeting (New York, 24–28 Feb 2012)
  
• Invited lecture (School of Architecture, Polytechnic University of Milan, 20 Jan 2012)