DATA/NET: The Networks Behind the Data (Centers)
Dec 8, 2026 9:30–12:30
Berlage Room 1
Faculty of Architecture + BE, TU Delft
Digital infrastructures are the physical backbone of the global internet world. Without data centers, submarine cables, and energy grids, no digital service would be possible. Thus, digital components are increasingly considered critical infrastructure and are becoming symbols of the contemporary age.
We experience more and more an on-life condition, in which reality and digital dimension are often hybridised. Individual behaviour, public services, and private industries incessantly produce data, and this trend will continue to grow with cloud services, AI training and improvement, and quantum computing. Thus, digitalisation is linked to modernisation, innovation, and economic growth, albeit with growing criticism. It is depicted as an ephemeral dimension.
However, improvements in data centers in different parts of the world has suddenly unveiled the material dimension of this transition, leading to social protests and a complex geopolitical situation, in which data sovereignty becomes a strategic democratic issue. Against global standardised, top-down models, alternative proposals are emerging from the territories, communities, and transdisciplinary research, from open data conception to attention to environmental local challenges, to critical data studies.
DATA/NET
Programme
9.30-9.45 Opening Georg Vrachliotis – TU Delft Cristiana Mattioli – CRAFT, DAStU – Politecnico di Milano
10.00-10.30 Too Small to Be Sovereign?
Kunhan Li (Aalto University, Finland) /technology policy
In dialogue with Cristiana Mattioli (Politecnico di Milano) and Bastiaan van Loenen (TU Delft)
10.40-11.10 More computer for a burning planet?
Fieke Jansen (University of Amsterdam)
In dialogue with Georg Vrachliotis and Negar Sanaan Bensi (TU Delft)
11.20-11.50 Cooling the Cloud
Marina Otero Verzier (Harvard GSD)
In dialogue with Victor Munoz Sanz and Anna Karla de Almeida (TU Delft)
12.00-12.30 Q&A
Building a European Network of Scholars
Building on the morning lectures, an afternoon collaborative workshop (14.00-16.30) aims to discuss which topics are already being addressed by the various research groups in the fields of architecture and urban planning, which ones remain underexplored, and where potential collaborations lie. Thereby identifying strategic issues for joint activities, concrete opportunities for research and outreach, and short- to medium-term objectives. The afternoon session is by invitation only. If interested, please send an email with your motivation to Cristiana Mattioli (cristiana.mattioli@polimi.it)
The symposium jointly organised by scholars at TU Delft (Critical Environments, Borders & Territories) and Politecnico di Milano frames these issues from a spatial perspective to better understand the impacts of global processes and actors on territories, the emergence of socio-spatial inequalities across regions, and the possibility for an effective integration of digital, energy, and green transition.
Organised as part of the ProdAction pilot project with the Competence Center for Antifragile Territories (CRAFT), this symposium aims to create or consolidate research networks on an emerging topic, and to define concrete opportunities for future joint research and outreach activities.