What infrastructures make artificial intelligence possible, and what are their consequences for land, energy, water, data and our ways of life?
Academic Director
Marina Otero Verzier
Architect, researcher, and curator specialising in architecture, technology, and ecological transformation.
The digital infrastructure we have today is the result of specific choices. How might it be otherwise?
The cloud is not immaterial. Every search, file, artificial intelligence model and digital service relies on data centres, communication networks, energy systems, water, minerals, territories, devices and human labour.
Redesigning the Cloud examines these infrastructures from material, ecological and political perspectives. Across nine sessions, the programme combines critical analysis, research, site visits, urban explorations and experimental practices to understand how the digital systems we use every day are built and maintained, and to explore how they might be designed, governed and inhabited differently.
Directed by Marina Otero Verzier, the course brings together practitioners from architecture, design, art, research and technology whose work addresses the material, social and environmental transformations associated with digitalisation and artificial intelligence.
The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is accelerating the development of data centres and increasing demand for computing power, energy, water and material resources.
Yet these infrastructures often remain out of sight. The metaphor of the “cloud” presents digital services as abstract and immaterial systems, when in reality they depend on specific architectures, territories and supply chains.
Understanding these conditions allows us to ask different questions:
- Where is our data stored?
- Who controls the infrastructures that process it?
- How much energy and water does artificial intelligence require?
- Which territories sustain these systems?
- What happens to the data we continue to accumulate?
- What alternatives exist to dominant technological models?
- How might we design digital infrastructures that are more situated, sustainable and collective?
The programme takes these questions as a starting point and approaches digital infrastructure not as an inevitable technical background, but as a space of decision-making, conflict and intervention.
Marina Otero Verzier, architect, researcher, curator and educator. Her work explores the relationships between architecture, technology, resources and ecology, with particular attention to digital infrastructures and the territorial transformations produced by contemporary systems of data storage and processing.
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 nine sessions combine presentations, conversations, exercises, visits, urban explorations and experimental practices to approach digital infrastructures across different scales and methodologies.
We will move from the territorial and architectural dimensions of computation to the material conditions of artificial intelligence; from the circulation and storage of data to decentralised networks, digital sovereignty and low-tech models.
The programme includes a visit to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, an Internet Tour through Barcelona, experimental sessions, and the analysis of cases and conflicts related to data centres, ecology and digital infrastructures.
Each participant will be able to select an infrastructure, technology or issue connected to their own field of interest and use the frameworks developed throughout the course to build a situated analysis and connect the programme’s content to their professional or research practice.
The course is intended for people interested in understanding the transformations associated with artificial intelligence and digital infrastructures through perspectives that connect technology, territory, ecology and society.
It may be particularly relevant to professionals and students in fields such as:
- architecture, urbanism and design;
- art and cultural practice;
- technology and innovation;
- digital humanities;
- communication and digital culture;
- social and political sciences;
- academic research;
- sustainability and ecological transition;
- public administration and digital policy;
- organisations and projects concerned with technological sovereignty, environmental justice or digital rights.
No previous knowledge of programming or computer science is required.
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.
9 in-person sessions
Dates: 13 October–4 November 2026
Schedule: afternoons, depending on the session
Location: Eina Bosc / various locations across Barcelona
Languages: Spanish and English, depending on the session
Fee: €676
Format: in person
Certificate: certificate of completion
Limited places
You can register by clicking the following link.
Two full scholarships
With the support of the Fundación Banco Sabadell, the programme offers two scholarships covering 100% of the tuition fee.
The scholarships are intended for applicants whose practice, research or professional profile is connected to the areas addressed by the course and for whom the tuition fee may represent a barrier to participation.
To apply, please send the following documents to eina.obra@eina.cat by 15 September 2026:
- CV or portfolio.
- A motivation letter of no more than 500 words explaining your interest in the programme and its relationship to your professional or academic background, practice or research project.
Applications will be assessed according to the applicant’s motivation, the relevance of their profile to the programme’s content and the contribution the programme may make to their professional or academic development.
All applicants will be notified individually of the decision on 22 September 2026.
