Black Boxes / White Clouds
WS 2025
WHAT?
Artificial intelligence and data infrastructure are gradually shaping our everyday lives, even though they often remain invisible. This semester will focus on two poles of this transformation: AI-enhanced living spaces on a smaller scale and data centres as a new large-scale infrastructure. Students may choose to concentrate on one of these themes, or to interconnect both.
On the first level, the task is to explore how AI can transform the apartment or the house – from spatial organization and energy consumption to its ecological footprint. On the second level, the focus shifts to the form and integration of data centres into cities and landscapes. These centres provide the computational power for AI systems, yet are often detached from the very societies and urban environments they serve.
WHY?
Data centres are the physical foundations of the digital world. Even though we speak of the “cloud,” no data is bodiless – every email, video, or AI query is stored on actual servers, inside buildings filled with cables, disks, and cooling systems. This new architectural typology is emerging right before our eyes and has the potential to radically transform the form of both cities and landscapes.
The infrastructure being built also triggers a chain of transformations that are not only architectural, but also political, economic, and social. Theorists suggest that together with AI may come not only the idea of universal basic income, but even the concept of universal access to intelligence – meaning that access to AI could become a new fundamental right, as essential as access to water or electricity.
The pace of development is so rapid that architects often lag behind. We should therefore reflect – first on the life that will emerge, and only then on the architecture, cities, and landscapes that will need to be reshaped accordingly.
HOW?
The studio is conceived as a vertical studio that connects students from different years and levels of study. Students will work with AI not only as a theme but also as a design tool – from generating texts and images to creating scenarios and critical speculations. Advanced digital tools and experimental methods will be used, including:
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Architectural and digital design in Rhino + Grasshopper, with plugins, scripting, and parametric design.
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AI tools – from chatbots (ChatGPT, Claude) and image generators (DALL·E, Stable Diffusion) to data analysis tools.
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Animation, AR/VR, and interactive visualization to explore projects from multiple perspectives.
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Calculations of CO₂ footprint, energy consumption, and environmental impacts of the proposals.
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Workshops and lectures by guest experts from architecture, IT, and energy sectors.
The semester will begin with group research focusing on key topics (see below). Students will then move gradually from research to concepts, and finally to architectural proposals.
INTRODUCTORY RESEARCH:
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Energy and Heat – Data centres generate surplus heat, which can be reused for heating buildings or public facilities such as swimming pools.
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Location and Urbanism – Placing centres in cities, on the periphery, or in rural areas brings different impacts on employment, infrastructure, and digital networks.
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Architectural Form – Materials, shapes, and façades define whether data centres remain anonymous monoliths or become culturally legible buildings.
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Future and Legacy – The short technological life cycle requires strategies for recycling or repurposing data centres once they become obsolete.
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AI and Social Change – Artificial intelligence introduces new social models and transforms the form of housing and architecture.
TOPICS
BYTE | AI enhanced/assisted living and working
MICRO | Interior Design | Small Architecture
A near future of the apartment/house (≈5 years) in which AI transforms rituals, privacy, work, learning and care, imprinting itself on the floor plan, atmosphere and rules of living together. The focus is on spatial UX (voice, gesture, ambient interfaces), new “non-rooms” and shared spaces in the building, and the balancing of comfort and sustainability against overuse of AI with a high data and carbon footprint.
Design Direction:
Design of an apartment/house or workplace with AI integration and consideration of UBI/UAI, layout variations, scenarios of daily life/operation with a clearly articulated boundary of AI integration.
KILOBYTE | Integrated data centers in cities or landscapes
MESO | Architecture | Small Urban/Landscape Design
Data centers as cultural, city-making and landscape-shaping nodes: how to integrate them into the structure of cities and the fabric of the landscape, make their societal value visible, and reconnect them spatially to the city or landscape. The focus is on the public face and engagement with the public, symbiosis with surrounding institutions and public space, visibility/concealment, and the relation of centralization vs. distributed networks.
Design Direction:
Data centers and their integration into the urban/landscape fabric through clearly defined places to dwell, day/night and seasonal modes of use, and legible paths and thresholds to the surroundings.
MEGABYTE | AI as a new societal paradigm
MACRO | Large-scale Urban/Landscape Design
Urbanism and landscape as a mediator between computational infrastructure and the social contract: power, culture, economy, geopolitics and “digital noise”. The focus is on shared public computing resources, data sovereignty and the European network (incl. transatlantic entries) versus local autonomy and identity.
Design Direction:
Emerging data landscapes at the scale of large urbanism and landscape interventions/concepts. Design of large infrastructural and landscape elements (network nodes and corridors, protected belts of quiet, energy-and-data landscapes) and their impacts on cities and regions.
GIGABYTE | Diploma / Bachelor’s projects
META | The sky is the limit!
Individual projects developing the “space × society” framework in the contexts of circularity, temporality and cultural layering. The focus is on housing commons and public programs around invisible infrastructure, with an emphasis on new typologies and rules of living together.
Design Direction:
Clearly formulated narratives of place, societal impacts and readable spatial principles.