Matīss Groskaufmanis. The Architecture of Together and Apart

Moderated by Anna Bitkina and Maria Veits / TOK

Matīss will discuss the architecture of an individual apartment in context political shifts in the 20th century East Europe, and today. Several case studies in Rīga will illustrate how one of the most ubiquitous forms of modern urban dwelling has been instrumentalized both by state and extra-state power structures as means of social, economic, and ideological reform. The talk will trace the recent history of the individual apartment, and its function as an object of a social contract, a unit of economic exchange, and most recently—as an immunological bubble.
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Matīss Groskaufmanis is an architect and educator. Currently he is based at the Aarhus School of Architecture, where he holds a position of a teaching assistant professor. His research and design work examines architecture’s relationship to economies of production, with a particular focus on the management of design practice. In 2019–2020 he was the Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. In 2018, he served as a curator of the Latvian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, exploring housing as a means of nation building. An alumnus of the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, he holds a master’s degree in architecture (with distinction) from Delft University of Technology and a bachelor's degree in architecture from Glasgow School of Art. Previously, Matīss has worked on research, publishing, and building projects as part of Rotterdam-based architecture practices OMA/AMO and MVRDV. 

The event takes place as a part of the program “Get Real!”, a series of online discussions about housing policy and new forms of (co)existence curated by TOK in December 2020 - June 2021 as a part of 5 season of its ongoing project “Critical Mass”. New season focuses on the emerging and complex issues of housing, real estate, urban development, contemporary and historical housing conditions in post-socialist and neoliberal contexts as well as pressing socio-political and environmental processes in megacities.