Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió is an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of California, San Diego—on unceded Kumeyaay land—where he is also co-director of the Just Transitions Initiative, member of the Indigenous Futures Institute, and faculty in the Design Lab.

Shvartzberg Carrió researches the architectural and urban history of modernism in the Americas with a focus on technology, law, geopolitics, labor, Indigeneity, and racial capitalism across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

He holds a PhD in Architecture from Columbia University, a Master’s in Aesthetics and Politics from the California Institute of the Arts, a Bachelor’s degree and MArch from University College London, and a Diploma in Professional Practice in Architecture from Westminster University. At Columbia University, he was also a Graduate Fellow at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and the lead coordinator and teacher for the MSc Thesis in the Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture program. Previously, he was assistant professor in the History of Architecture and Urban Development at Cornell University and has also taught design, history, and theory at the California Institute of the Arts and the University of Southern California.

As a practicing architect, Shvartzberg Carrió worked for architects such as OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam, Barozzi Veiga in Barcelona, and as project architect for David Chipperfield in London, where he led the design and construction of projects internationally.

His research has been supported by institutions including the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies, the Getty Research Institute, the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, the Huntington Library and Archives, the Mellon Fellowship in Egalitarianism and the Metropolis at the University of Michigan, and the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research at UCSD, among others. He has showcased his work at exhibitions throughout the world, including representing the United States at the Venice Architecture Biennial in 2014, and writing a number of catalogue essays for the national pavilions of The Netherlands, Austria, and Chile.

His books, essays, and articles have appeared in collections from Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, Architectural Design, ARQ Magazine, Bloomsbury, Dialectic, Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Development, The Avery Review, Places Journal, and others. He is a 2023-24 Getty Fellowship recipient and a 2023 Graham Foundation grant awardee for his first book monograph, Inland Empire: Settler Colonialism, Modern Architecture, and the Rise of American Hegemony, forthcoming from Duke University Press. He is currently a Board member of Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, and was the founding Research Coordinator for The Architecture Lobby. 

At UC San Diego, Shvartzberg Carrió’s teaching focuses on histories and theories of architecture and geopolitics, particularly how architectural technologies and territorial infrastructures mediate regimes of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and processes of decolonization, as well as design theory and praxis for a just transition.