The field research, data collection, and prototype development will all result in the first open-source manual for global data center architecture design containing examples of ecological, circular, and egalitarian data storage models. The prize is intended to fund two years of Otero’s research and travel.
“While there is an urgent need to find new ways to understand progress, imagining alternative futures in current circumstances is proving troublesome. In this context, the proposal is a deeply optimistic project that considers other worlds possible: post anthropocentric, ecological, and plural. The prize reaffirms my confidence in the ability of this research to bring about new paradigms for consuming and storing data, expressly to make a difference,.
Data centers might not seem like an exciting place for an architectural project. However, the huge scale of the operations of the data industry and its pervasiveness and increasing importance in the contemporary world–coupled with its openness to innovation and concurrent pressures to find better socio-ecological models–creates a fertile environment for experimentation and action.”
Data centers might not seem like an exciting place for an architectural project. However, the huge scale of the operations of the data industry and its pervasiveness and increasing importance in the contemporary world–coupled with its openness to innovation and concurrent pressures to find better socio-ecological models–creates a fertile environment for experimentation and action.”
Marina Otero
“Harvard GSD is proud and honored to award the 2022 Wheelwright Prize to Marina Otero for her timely proposal, Future Storage: Architectures to Host the Metaverse.
While her title sounds futuristic, the issue is anything but: Marina recognizes the very urgent challenge of storing data in and for today’s world. Her research will highlight innovations in data storage architectures and infrastructures, recognizing current inequities and scarcities, but also the potential for how data can transform entire communities worldwide through these new civic infrastructures and their reach. In her capacity as head of the social design masters at the Design Academy Eindhoven and also as director of research at the Het Nieuwe Instituut, she has already laid the groundwork for this important topic, ensuring the impact of her Wheelwright output, which will result in the first manual for global data center architecture design, as well as open-source course material and public programming.”
Sarah M. Whiting, Harvard GSD’s Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture.
Now in its 10th cycle, the Wheelwright Prize supports innovative design research, crossing both cultural and architectural boundaries. Previous winners have presented diverse research proposals, including studies of kitchen typologies around the world; the architecture and culture of greenhouses; the potential of seaweed, shellfish, and the intertidal zone to advance architectural knowledge and material futures; and how spaces have been transformed through the material contributions of the African Diaspora.
Otero was among four remarkable finalists selected from a highly competitive and international pool of applicants. The 2022 Wheelwright Prize jury commends finalists Curry J. Hackett, Summer Islam, and Feifei Zhou for their promising research proposals and presentations.
Marina Otero follows 2021 Wheelwright Prize winner Germane Barnes, whose Wheelwright project Anatomical Transformations in Classical Architecture is in its travel-research phase.
