Architectural Design V-IX: The Production of Cloud - Designing the Zurich Data Centre (M.Topalovic)

Abstract

This semester, we would like to invite you to explore the environmental and social impact of the Swiss data cloud. How can we study securitized spaces of minimal human presence? Who controls the use of data? Can data centres serve as public assets. How can data centres be designed to contribute better to a just transition and to urban life?

Objective

Throughout the semester, you will work with different visual media and across scales: from understanding the spatial logic of information flows, to analysing urban impact of data centres, to visualising the cloud infrastructures of Switzerland. Using narrative cartographies, you will also map the cloud governance, and explore the architecture of a data centre through physical models. Each student team will be assigned a specific data centre in Switzerland as a study site. The teams will conduct on-site fieldwork, and expert interviews. You will create a series of analytical drawings, diagrams, maps, and a video reportage. As your final project, you will build an interpretative architectural model of a data center, expressing your design hypothesis. How can we make the invisible visible? How can we design a better data center? POWER TO THE PEOPLE is a studio series at Architecture of Territory dedicated to improving the social and environmental outcomes of sustainability transitions. The studio is affiliated with the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS) through the research grant: "The Production of Cloud". PROCESS AND RESULTS The work consists of investigative journeys and intensive studio sessions. Architecture of Territory values intellectual curiosity, commitment, and team spirit. We are looking for avid travellers and team workers, motivated to make strong and independent contributions. Our approach enables students to explore a range of methods pertaining to territory, including ethnographic fieldwork, drawing techniques, writing, videography, and online publishing. Experts and guests will guide us on that journey. Students work in groups of two to three. The semester is structured in three phases: 1) mapping and fieldwork; 2) urban analysis and video reportage; and 3) architectural analysis and model. Core Course: MY CLOUD Running parallel to the design studio, the core course MY CLOUD is a lecture series that aims to puncture the gaseous metaphor of "the cloud." The series features four distinguished guest speakers-Flora Mary Bartlett, Marina Otero Verzier, Alfredo Thiermann, and Yiqiu Liu-from the fields of urban geography, digital economy, sociology, environmental history, and speculative design. Together, we will explore the cloud's physical footprint, examine who owns and governs it, historicize the infrastructures that enabled its rise, and reimagine the futures it might create.

Content

Your TikTok scroll, a robotaxi's u-turn, a question to ChatGPT-every byte is somewhere in the cloud, gulps megawatts, and silently redraws the territory. In the public conversation we are presented with cloud-like images on a bright blue background. Artificial Intelligence-the latest use of cloud computing-has been successful in sapping our attention. It is currently adopted by more than half of the world's population. The production of this great cloud metaphor relies on material processes—a planetary metabolism of mineral extraction, water depletion, e-waste, and often exploitative labor practices in remote regions. Every click, search, or generated image drives the global Al race for better models, infrastructural expansion, and greater control over resources and data sources-so much so that Al is becoming an obstacle to energy transition. Along with phenomena such as digital pollution and digital detox, we now also debate data sovereignty-the ability of countries, and thus institutions and individuals within their borders, to ensure local control over the data they produce, a form of power increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few tech giants. To understand AI's spatial impacts, we will start the journey in Switzerland—a country where "Data is the new gold", and where AI growth capitalises on political stability, good infrastructure and low taxes. New data centres are being built in tax havens, along infrastructure corridors, near tech headquarters, and Zurich and Geneva's financial hubs. The history of the data centre is thus also a history of automation and dehumanisation. As an architectural typology, data centres are often black boxes: hermetic, windowless structures, sometimes in remote locations, even Alpine bunkers, maintaining uninterrupted power supply and optimal humidity and temperature for server functions. The architectural task is also to articulate security barriers with regard to public access to facilities and information. These hidden interiors are encased by defensive ensembles of fences, gates and security cameras— amplified security aesthetics arguably functioning as a business reassurance to their private clients. In urban contexts, data center locations are determined based on connectivity to the electrical grid and a fibre-optic backbone. A recent study claims that Swiss data centres are projected to consume 15 percent of national electricity by 2030. In the last five years, the Canton of Zurich registered more than 100 requests for new data centers. In contrast to their immense energy consumption, they offer very few jobs or other public benefits and attract little investment into the communes. Although the Canton Zurich requires all newly built data centres to supply their waste heat to district heating networks, many of them are already served by other sources, or their required expansion in order to store and transmit this energy, would be too costly. This semester, we would like to invite you to explore the environmental and social impact of the Swiss data cloud. How can we study securitized spaces of minimal human presence? What kind of buildings and infrastructures underpin the cloud? What are cloud's externalities and how can they be minimised? What future expansion of cloud architectures is expected in Switzerland? Who controls the use of data? We want to speculate about a design of future data centres that are not merely black boxes, but that can serve as public assets. How can data centers be designed to contribute better to a just transition and to urban life?

Resources