Dr. Vyta Pivo is a scholar of the intersecting histories of material lifecycles, construction labor, ordinary landscapes, and climate change. Her forthcoming book, Cast in Concrete: How the US Built Its Empire (University of Chicago Press), traces the history of the US cement and concrete industries and their global and transplanetary expansion. The book examines how concrete structured not only architecture and infrastructure, but also labor, culture, and political systems that deepened global addiction to this material of modernity. Pivo’s research has been published in various academic and public-facing outlets, including the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Journal of Architectural Education, PLATFORM, Psyche/Aeon, and others. Her research has received support from the National Science Foundation, Andrew Mellon Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, and the MacDowell Fellowship, among others.
Prior to joining faculty at the University of Miami School of Architecture, Pivo was a postdoctoral scholar with the Michigan Society of Fellows and assistant professor of architectural history at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan. She earned her PhD in American studies from George Washington University, MA in architectural history from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and BA in studio arts/architecture from Wesleyan University.
Dr. Vyta Pivo
