Redesigning the Cloud

The cloud is a design project. It is time to redesign it.

Much of our lives unfolds in zeros and ones, in what we call the cloud. A space that appears immaterial and limitless, yet depends on data centres, submarine cables, satellites, mines, energy, water, and human labour. Like any infrastructure, the cloud is not neutral: it is shaped by technical, economic, and political decisions that determine who can access it, how it is organised, what futures it enables, and who ultimately benefits from it.

Just as language defines what can be said, digital infrastructures shape how we work, communicate, remember, and imagine. The platforms we rely on encourage particular ways of understanding the world, while generating their own forms of expression and visual cultures. The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and the increasing availability of computational power are accelerating these transformations, bringing some of the defining conflicts of our time into sharper focus.

Every prompt relies on infrastructures distributed across the globe, whose environmental, social, and political footprint continues to grow: servers that consume vast amounts of electricity and generate emissions; mines that destroy mountains to extract the minerals required to manufacture electronic devices; and digital platforms that amplify disinformation and violence.

Yet these infrastructures are not inevitable. They have been designed—and for that very reason, they can be redesigned.

This capsule approaches the cloud as an architectural, political, and cultural project. Bringing together architecture, design, art, media studies, environmental humanities, and political ecology, we will examine the infrastructures that sustain the digital world and explore how they might be transformed.

Drawing on examples such as sovereign clouds, permacomputing, community-owned infrastructures, and low-tech computing, we will imagine alternative ways of building the digital: infrastructures that are more distributed and situated; technologies capable of reducing environmental impact; and governance models that place the common good above corporate interests. Against the paradigm of permanent connectivity, we will explore new temporalities for the digital world—rhythms that embrace disconnection and care, while fostering greater attunement to the planet's ecological cycles and limits.

This capsule understands digital infrastructures as a field of intervention for architecture, design, and political and cultural practice.

Participants will explore tools for imagining and developing alternative models for data storage, processing, and governance that reduce environmental impacts while fostering more just, collective relationships with technology.

The programme offers an up-to-date overview of technological developments, regulatory frameworks, and emerging alternatives that are reshaping digital infrastructures, alongside the forms of civic resistance and conflict arising within an increasingly interconnected world.

Marina Otero Verzier, architect, researcher, and curator specialising in architecture, technology, and ecological transformation.
Joana Moll, artist and researcher specialising in digital technologies, data infrastructures, and technological ecologies.
Mario Santamaría, artist and researcher exploring the physical and political infrastructures of the internet.
Jara Rocha, researcher, writer, and curator exploring the political and material dimensions of digital technologies.
Blanca Pujals, architect and researcher specialising in infrastructures, territory, and the geopolitics of materials.
Andrea Muniáin, architect and researcher exploring the relationships between bodies, technologies, and digital spaces.
Tu Nube Seca Mi Río, a research and activist collective focused on digital infrastructures and their ecosocial impact.
José Luis de Vicente, curator and researcher specialising in digital culture, design, and contemporary ecologies.
Ana Robles Pérez, researcher, designer, and educator working at the intersection of design, visual anthropology, and archival practices.

The capsule approaches the classroom as a space for shared inquiry. Each session combines lectures, conversations, workshops, site visits, and hands-on experimentation, offering multiple entry points into digital infrastructures—from the geopolitics of minerals to interface design, from data centres to archives, and from artificial intelligence to community-based practices.

The programme is designed for students, researchers, and professionals from a wide range of fields—including design, architecture, art, technology, communication, anthropology, philosophy, political science, and activism—who are interested in exploring the material, ecological, and political dimensions of digital infrastructures and contributing to their redesign.

It is also aimed at those engaged in processes of technological transformation within cultural institutions, public administrations, companies, associations, and grassroots organisations.

Session 1 — Wild Clouds
13/10 · 18:30–21:30
Marina Otero and Ana Robles
Programme kick-off. The cloud is a material and political construct. In this opening session, we will examine the layers that sustain it: bodies, territories, energy, minerals, data centres, regulatory frameworks, and communities. We will introduce design as a tool for intervening in digital infrastructures.

Session 2 — Contested Infrastructures
14/10  from 5:30 to 20:30 pm
Joana Moll, Tu Nube Seca Mi Río and Marina Otero
Who designs digital infrastructures, and who bears their consequences? This session explores the impacts of digital infrastructures and the ways they can be challenged and transformed through art, architecture, politics, and activism.

Session 3 — Post-Internet Bodies
20/10 from 6:30 to 9:30 pm
Andrea Muniáin and Mario Santamaría
How do digital technologies reshape our perception and our ways of representing the body and space? This session explores how these technologies reconfigure bodies, identities, and architectures, while examining the possibilities they open for appropriation and reinterpretation.

Session 4 — Decentralised Networks and Low-Tech Computing
21/10 from 5:30 to 8:30 pm
TBC
A hands-on laboratory exploring servers, alternative hardware, and digital devices to imagine more autonomous, situated, and creative forms of computing.

Session 5 — New Frontiers of Computing
27/10 from 5:30–8:00 pm
Marina Otero and Blanca Pujals
A visit to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center to explore the infrastructures behind advanced computing. Together, we will examine their role in knowledge production and discuss their ecosocial, territorial, and political implications.

Session 6 — Beyond the Prompt
28/10 from 6:30 to 7:30 pm
Marina Otero and Andrea Muniáin
An exploration of design practices that use artificial intelligence to rethink our relationship with memory, intimacy, learning, and creativity.

Session 7 — Internet Tour
31/10 schedule to be confirmed.
Mario Santamaría
A guided exploration of the geographies of the Internet across the city of Barcelona, uncovering how the digital materialises in buildings, cables, infrastructures, and urban landscapes that often remain invisible.

Session 8 — Practices of Dissent and Care
03/11 from 6:30 to 9:30 pm
Jara Rocha
A space for dialogue on digital infrastructures as sites of contestation, care, and transformation, where participants will explore situated and collective ways of relating to technology.

Session 9 — Other Digital Futures
04/11 from 6:30 to 9:30 pm
Marina Otero, José Luis de Vicente, and Ana Robles
A closing session of conversations, activations, and shared experimentation to begin imagining desirable digital futures beyond those shaped by corporate interests.

The programme costs €676. Places are limited. Register before 1 September to enjoy a 10% early bird discount by entering the code EARLYBIRD2026 at checkout.

You can register by clicking the following link.

Scolarships

Redesigning the Cloud offers 2 scholarships with the support of the Fundació Banc Sabadell.
To apply, send your portfolio or CV, along with a motivation letter, to eina.obra@eina.cat by 15 September.

Scolarships will be awarded based on academic criteria and the financial resources available to applicants.