Maik Novotny studied architecture and urban planning at the University of Stuttgart and TU Delft. Since 2000, he has been living in Vienna, working as an architect, planner, and teacher in the Department of Spatial and Sustainable Design at TU Vienna University. He is the architecture critic for the daily newspaper Der Standard and the weekly magazine Falter, and contributes to a variety of other media outlets. He coedited the books Eastmodern: Architecture and Design of the 1960s and 1970s in Slovakia (Springer Vienna, 2007) and PPAG: Speaking Architecture (Ambra Verlag, 2014). Novotny’s London research addresses the current challenges for social housing in London and Vienna. His topic contrasts Vienna, which boasts a history of producing high-quality, widely accessibly housing, and postwar social housing in London, which has become stigmatized and frequently condemned as "sink-estates," ever-threatened with demolition. Novotny’s research will compare both cities’ approaches to public housing, seeking solutions for re-densifying and revitalizing existing aging housing stock.
