Yale Architecture Forum
Marina Otero
Computational Compost
Computational Compost explores future models for digital storage and suggests alternative approaches to our relationship with data. The project delves into the environmental implications of the so-called ‘cloud,’ especially the significant water and energy demands of the servers and computing systems that manage our data. Through metabolic processes, it connects the sheer computational energy required to decipher the mysteries of life’s origin with the terrestrial processes that renew it. As supercomputers simulate the universe’s genesis and expansion, the heat they generate leads to irreversible changes, affecting organic life through cycles of composition and decomposition. These processes intertwine vast cosmic timelines with computational and earthly dynamics, positioning data storage architectures beyond a human-centric perspective.
Speaker bio:
Dr. Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and researcher. In 2022 she received Harvard’s Wheelwright Prize for a project on the future of data storage. Her winning proposal Future Storage: Architectures to Host the Metaverse examines new architecture paradigms for storing data and how reimagining digital infrastructures could meet the unprecedented demands facing the world today.
Since 2020 Otero has been head of the MA Social Design Masters at Design Academy Eindhoven. The program focuses on design practices attuned to ecological and social challenges. From 2015 to 2022, she was the director of research at Het Nieuwe Instituut, where she led initiatives focused on labor, extraction, and mental health from an architectural and post-anthropocentric perspective, including “Automated Landscapes,” “BURN-OUT, ” and “Lithium: States of Exhaustion.” Previously, she was director of global network programming at Studio-X, Columbia GSAPP.
Image:
3D replicas of quipu fragments, the ancient Inka accounting instruments crafted from camelid fiber. Credit: Studio Marina Otero