https://maroskrivy.eu Maros Krivy Thu, 18 Jan 2024 08:26:10 +0000 https://maroskrivy.eu en https://maroskrivy.eu/Zany-Beetroot-Architecture-Autopoiesis-and-the-Spatial-Formations-of Thu, 18 Jan 2024 08:26:10 +0000 Maros Krivy https://maroskrivy.eu/Zany-Beetroot-Architecture-Autopoiesis-and-the-Spatial-Formations-of Maroš Krivý and Matthew Gandy, “Zany Beetroot: Architecture, Autopoiesis, and the Spatial Formations of Late Capital,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 41, 6&nbsp;(2023): 1058–1074. Using a pedagogic experiment at an architectural school in Tallinn as an empirical and conceptual starting point, this article explores the significance of autopoiesis in contemporary urban design. We suggest that organic processes—in this case the use of vegetable peels as a novel substrate—have been widely deployed in architectural discourse as a form of biomimicry. At a theoretical level these conceptual moves mark part of a wider set of dialogues between the arts and the sciences that rest on a form of degraded or even “phantom” modernism. The article draws on various insights, including the recent work of Fredric Jameson and Sianne Ngai, to explore the changing relationship between aesthetic categories and critical theory in the urban arena. We argue that aesthetic motifs derived from nature, including various forms of organicist architecture, are being effectively recycled under the aegis of late capital. Continue to the article... <img width="1200" height="1200" width_o="1200" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/af64ecd12ab50875087b52eb93ca4bf445c05445d535e2289080b3d70cfb1247/beet1.jpg" data-mid="202099086" border="0" alt="Image: Janine Röfke, Isacco Begarani, Margaux Le Bouille, Mae Köömnemägi, Hanna-Liisa Mõtus (2016).&nbsp;Biocomputation and Urban Protocols in Tallinn: Metabolizing Urban Waste into Layered Morphologies (Unpublished report, Estonian Academy of Arts), p.&nbsp; 78" data-caption="Image: Janine Röfke, Isacco Begarani, Margaux Le Bouille, Mae Köömnemägi, Hanna-Liisa Mõtus (2016).&nbsp;Biocomputation and Urban Protocols in Tallinn: Metabolizing Urban Waste into Layered Morphologies (Unpublished report, Estonian Academy of Arts), p.&nbsp; 78" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/af64ecd12ab50875087b52eb93ca4bf445c05445d535e2289080b3d70cfb1247/beet1.jpg" /> <img width="706" height="720" width_o="706" height_o="720" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f7b10fbcfdd054f1859ab2acd587aedbe83a5100e0d3fbbcb0c999504a60305f/beet2.png" data-mid="202098750" border="0" alt="Image: Janine Röfke, Isacco Begarani, Margaux Le Bouille, Mae Köömnemägi, Hanna-Liisa Mõtus (2016).&nbsp;Biocomputation and Urban Protocols in Tallinn: Metabolizing Urban Waste into Layered Morphologies (Unpublished report, Estonian Academy of Arts), p.&nbsp; 58" data-caption="Image: Janine Röfke, Isacco Begarani, Margaux Le Bouille, Mae Köömnemägi, Hanna-Liisa Mõtus (2016).&nbsp;Biocomputation and Urban Protocols in Tallinn: Metabolizing Urban Waste into Layered Morphologies (Unpublished report, Estonian Academy of Arts), p.&nbsp; 58" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/706/i/f7b10fbcfdd054f1859ab2acd587aedbe83a5100e0d3fbbcb0c999504a60305f/beet2.png" /> <img width="916" height="1126" width_o="916" height_o="1126" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2935b425137276d060bc6e813ece4be802836514f6a77107c3003e30fd0d462f/beet3.png" data-mid="202098826" border="0" alt="Image: Lien Clyncke, Egle Lillem&auml;e, Ann Sophie Megerle, Charlotte Raisch, Mikko Toivanen (2016).&nbsp;Biocomputation &amp; Urban Protocols (Unpublished report, Estonian Academy of Arts), p.&nbsp;24" data-caption="Image: Lien Clyncke, Egle Lillemäe, Ann Sophie Megerle, Charlotte Raisch, Mikko Toivanen (2016).&nbsp;Biocomputation &amp; Urban Protocols (Unpublished report, Estonian Academy of Arts), p.&nbsp;24" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/916/i/2935b425137276d060bc6e813ece4be802836514f6a77107c3003e30fd0d462f/beet3.png" /> https://maroskrivy.eu/Digital-Ecosystem-The-Journey-of-a-Metaphor-Digital-Geography-and Tue, 26 Sep 2023 20:24:17 +0000 Maros Krivy https://maroskrivy.eu/Digital-Ecosystem-The-Journey-of-a-Metaphor-Digital-Geography-and Maroš Krivý, “Digital Ecosystem: The Journey of a Metaphor,” Digital Geography and Society 5, 100057 (2023): 1–9. The term “digital ecosystem” has become ubiquitous through a seemingly endless stream of scholarship, punditry and hyperbole around digitalization, to the point that the metaphor is becoming dead. Considering “ecosystem” as a traveling concept straddling natural, social and technical systems, this article traces the extension of “digital ecosystem,” along with the adjacent “business ecosystem” and “entrepreneurial ecosystem,” in the fields of computer science, economy, governance and environmental policy. The origins of the concept as a form of circuitry applied to nature are outlined as a background against which to trace its role as a socio-technical metaphor for digital capitalism. Since the 1990s, various formulations of “ecosystem” have offered a naturalistic interpretation to phenomena ranging from economic interactions to digital infrastructure and the urban everyday. I conclude that by representing the internet and the market as complex, self-organizing processes, the metaphor prioritizes the imperative of adapting to—and downplays the possibility of challenging—our erratic digital capitalism. The article contributes by illuminating the ideological work of naturalistic models in the digital political economy. Evidence on using digital ecosystems in environmental policy is still emerging but points to a form of legitimacy exchange that reduces environmental problems to technical issues. Continue to the article... <img width="576" height="768" width_o="576" height_o="768" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/286b7ea81ddf49b3681267473d995d92e5d07775e9b0cbd7d7e3b141d6ed3984/X26663783.jpeg" data-mid="191935964" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/576/i/286b7ea81ddf49b3681267473d995d92e5d07775e9b0cbd7d7e3b141d6ed3984/X26663783.jpeg" /> https://maroskrivy.eu/Urbanists-in-the-Smart-City-Sidewalks-Sidewalk-Labs-and-the-Limits-to Thu, 18 Aug 2022 15:17:57 +0000 Maros Krivy https://maroskrivy.eu/Urbanists-in-the-Smart-City-Sidewalks-Sidewalk-Labs-and-the-Limits-to 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) The chapter contributes to the critical smart city literature by examining what I call an imaginary of complexity: the belief that the city is a complex, spontaneously self-organizing system. In the field of urbanism, the smart city – in the sense of a city replete with digital sensors – aligns with a broader and older idea that the city is essentially smart, or what various authors refer to as being complex https://maroskrivy.eu/The-Socialist-Past-is-a-Foreign-Country-Mass-Housing-and-Uses-of Thu, 18 Aug 2022 15:01:23 +0000 Maros Krivy https://maroskrivy.eu/The-Socialist-Past-is-a-Foreign-Country-Mass-Housing-and-Uses-of Maroš Krivý, “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.&nbsp; 285–300 (London: Routledge, 2023) This chapter focuses on heritage professionals and pundits to surveys contemporary heritage discourses around the the architecture of state-built mass housing in Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (former Czechoslovakia).&nbsp;It is argued that the socialist past is othered through the interconnected strategies of, on the one hand, denying heritage value to socialist mass-housing architecture and, on the other, construing its heritage value as “dissonant”. <img width="1096" height="1549" width_o="1096" height_o="1549" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e9de1380dbc0ca17edd4b9b264bef1b44c3a924194efd8c7aea79c8aab7b5058/cover.jpg" data-mid="150737917" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e9de1380dbc0ca17edd4b9b264bef1b44c3a924194efd8c7aea79c8aab7b5058/cover.jpg" /> https://maroskrivy.eu/Environment-The-Career-of-a-Concept-SAH-2022 Thu, 18 Aug 2022 16:13:58 +0000 Maros Krivy https://maroskrivy.eu/Environment-The-Career-of-a-Concept-SAH-2022 Environment: The Career of a Concept paper session, co-organized with Helena Mattsson Annual Meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians Pittsburgh, US27 April-1 May 2022 https://maroskrivy.eu/Reclaiming-Socialist-Space-Caricaturing-Socialism-Urban-Interventions Fri, 11 Feb 2022 12:56:23 +0000 Maros Krivy https://maroskrivy.eu/Reclaiming-Socialist-Space-Caricaturing-Socialism-Urban-Interventions Maroš Krivý, “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. This article introduces the concept of retro-utopian urbanism to analyse post-2008 urban interventions in three state-socialist public housing neighbourhoods in Eastern Europe. Through a comparative study of Petržalka (Bratislava, Slovakia), Lasnamäe (Tallinn, Estonia) and Bródno (Warsaw, Poland), I examine different approaches to combating the stigma associated with socialist housing. It is shown that these urban interventions are a double-edged sword, in that they challenge the widespread notion that socialist urbanism is totalitarian by weakening the significance of socialist ideas. The article argues that urban interventions contribute to foreclosing socialist alternatives in the present when they normalise “postsocialism”, a term I use to refer to neoliberal cap- italism’s ideological framework that sees socialism as obsolete. The concept of retro- utopian urbanism provides a lens through which to reflect on the limitations and chal- lenges of urban interventionism, and to rethink the debate on, and the persistence of, postsocialism in and beyond Eastern Europe. Continue to the article... <img width="1077" height="1549" width_o="1077" height_o="1549" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bcc256a00a4a324a5102eb864e7dd0ccb2b699fd70859c8d2acc5f07f3f0ce93/maros-krivy---reclaiming-socialist-space--caricaturing-socialism--urban-interventions-and-the-cleansing-of-political-content-in-state-socialist-public-housing-after-2008.jpg" data-mid="133170073" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bcc256a00a4a324a5102eb864e7dd0ccb2b699fd70859c8d2acc5f07f3f0ce93/maros-krivy---reclaiming-socialist-space--caricaturing-socialism--urban-interventions-and-the-cleansing-of-political-content-in-state-socialist-public-housing-after-2008.jpg" /> https://maroskrivy.eu/Urban-Professionals-and-Ecological-Imaginaries-AAG-2022 Thu, 18 Aug 2022 16:15:05 +0000 Maros Krivy https://maroskrivy.eu/Urban-Professionals-and-Ecological-Imaginaries-AAG-2022 Urban Professionals and Ecological Imaginaries paper presentation Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 25 February–1 March 2022 The concept of imaginaries represents an important focal point for interdisciplinary research around collectively held and materially encoded conceptions and beliefs through which social reality and expectations are interpreted, shaped and ordered to appear “natural”. Over the past decade a rich scholarship has examined the role of imaginaries in incarnating normative assumptions about good and bad forms of urban nature, along with the natural and built environments as their media. This paper builds on Jennifer S. Light’s (2009) study of ecological visions and urban professions in mid-century America, to focus on the role of urban professionals in shaping how we imagine the nature of cities. I track the career of the idea that the city is a self-organizing system by examining ways in which, over the past half century, city planners, urban designers and landscape architects in and outside the Global North rallied to this ecological analogy. I contribute to the study of urban nature by placing an emphasis on histories, sociologies and geographies of the ideological work around the nature of cities: how urban ecological imaginaries change over time, who has power to shape them, and from which places ideas around good and bad socio-ecological ordering emanate. https://maroskrivy.eu/New-Approaches-to-Urban-Nature-Landscapes-Practices-Ideas-AAG-2022 Thu, 18 Aug 2022 16:13:47 +0000 Maros Krivy https://maroskrivy.eu/New-Approaches-to-Urban-Nature-Landscapes-Practices-Ideas-AAG-2022 New Approaches to Urban Nature: Landscapes, Practices, Ideas paper session and panel discussion co-organized with S. Jasper Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 25 February–1 March 2022 https://maroskrivy.eu/Stigmatizing-and-Exoticizing-Mass-Housing-Neighbourhoods-interview-by Fri, 11 Feb 2022 13:07:20 +0000 Maros Krivy https://maroskrivy.eu/Stigmatizing-and-Exoticizing-Mass-Housing-Neighbourhoods-interview-by Maroš Krivý, Alžbeta Medková, “Prostor něčeho a někoho jiného? S Marošem Krivým o exotizaci, fetišizaci a stigmatizaci sídlišť,” A2 3 (2022): 20–21. Proč je postoj místní odborné i laické veřejnosti k sídlištní architektuře spíše kritický? Na historické i společenské příčiny této situace jsme se zeptali urbanisty Maroše Krivého. Dotkli jsme se také paternalismu architektů vůči obyvatelům sídlišť a problémů, které přináší delegitimizace kolektivního bydlení a socialismu vůbec. https://maroskrivy.eu/Learning-from-Socialism-Alternative-Modernities-in-the-Second-World Thu, 18 Aug 2022 16:15:32 +0000 Maros Krivy https://maroskrivy.eu/Learning-from-Socialism-Alternative-Modernities-in-the-Second-World Socialism as Past and Futureroundtable, with Vladimir Kulić, Juliana Maxim, Ana Miljački (chair: Douglas Spencer) Learning from Socialism: Alternative Modernities in the Second WorldCollege of Design, Iowa State University 17-18 May 2022 <img width="1360" height="1760" width_o="1360" height_o="1760" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5b88a7249921d63e0bf93322930a9978a07dc5a522f75bba1ba10b00be1a1af2/Learning-From-Socialism.jpg" data-mid="150762192" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5b88a7249921d63e0bf93322930a9978a07dc5a522f75bba1ba10b00be1a1af2/Learning-From-Socialism.jpg" />