Beyond the Cloud: Rethinking Data Through Architecture

Underlying its seeming neutrality, the word – derived from the Latin datum, "that which is given" – carries a deep history of seeing, measuring, and interpreting. Data are not simply numbers; they are mental instruments and cultural artifacts that have been used by human beings since the earliest times to understand the world, to decipher complexity, and to inform their decisions. From Mesopotamian clay tablets that recorded commerce and harvests, to pre-Columbian astronomical tables, the mathematical advances of the Arab world, and the initial mechanical calculators of the 17th century, the process of gathering and sorting data has always stretched human thinking. Though the mediums have changed – from stone and ink to code and cloud – the fundamental purpose is the same: transforming the mess of experience into ordered meaning, translating uncertainty into usable knowledge.

Today, in the era of hyperinformation and AI, information no longer tell us about the world – they shape, direct, and often prefigure it. Since the digital revolution of the early twentieth century, data production and consumption have been reborn in a spectacular manner. The Internet, personal computers, and soon mobile phones have brought with them the capability to make nearly every human activity a point of data: every movement, every click, every transaction, or digital interaction can be tracked, measured, and analyzed.

Within this setting, the phenomenon of big data has emerged – a huge, continuously increasing pool of diverse and often unstructured data derived from countless sources and formats. Tapping into such a complex stream requires sophisticated computational technologies. Big data has transformed decision-making at every stratum of society: from the optimization of international logistics to the tightening of consumer targeting, from enabling predictive medicine to managing the infrastructure of so-called smart cities, data has become a new type of cognitive capital – catalytic, powerful, and deeply impactful. But the increasing centrality of information comes at a price that is too readily ignored: its ecological and moral cost. In an era that increasingly depends on information to envision a "smart" future, it is crucial to not just challenge the intellectual or economic value of information, but the sustainability and accountability of information. How far does our drive for prediction, control, and optimization risk destabilizing the very ecological and social base on which life subsists?

This raises a broader question: how can architecture meaningfully engage with data and digital technologies beyond their instrumental use in the design of so-called smart cities? As sociologists like Bruno Latour remind us, data are never neutral – they are constructed, filtered, and interpreted within systems of power. Architecture, then, cannot afford to absorb them uncritically. It must instead ask: who generates this data, to what ends, and with what impacts? In this context, architecture can (and must) act as a space of resistance and reinvention – a platform for critical engagement with technology. Not merely to design efficient environments, but to envision equitable, inclusive, and truly responsive cities. Not just smart cities, but just cities.

Published by NAi Booksellers, June 2023 | Photographs: Paul Swagerman

In this context, one cannot overlook DATAPOLIS, a curatorial project of striking relevance initiated in 2019 at TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture by Paul Cournet and Negar Sanaan Bensi. Conceived as a critical, multidisciplinary platform, DATAPOLIS investigates the material and infrastructural dimensions of data, probing their ethical, political, cultural, and environmental entanglements. In an era dominated by the immaterial rhetoric of the digital, the project offers a rare counterpoint: a grounded approach that renders visible – and therefore contestable – the physical and symbolic architectures underpinning the global data ecosystem.

The study itself follows two main trajectories. The first seeks to demystify and deconstruct the image of the "cloud" – traditionally thought in terms of immaterial, ethereal presence, but in reality anchored to deeply material infrastructures: submarine cables, massive data centers, electric grids, and techno-industrial landscapes that extend far beyond the human scales of perception in time as well as space. As such, DATAPOLIS demystifies the digital imaginary, exposing the geopolitical weight and environmental cost of what is far too often figured as frictionless and ephemeral.

Published by NAi Booksellers, June 2023 | Photographs: Paul Swagerman

The second trajectory shifts toward a more existential and social dimension, examining how data have permeated the fabric of everyday life. No longer merely tools for analysis, data actively shape how we live, work, interact, and design. They generate new forms of subjectivity, redefine modes of organization, and influence our perception of reality. The digital is no longer just an instrument – it has become an environment, a condition of being that frames what is possible in our personal lives, social relationships, and urban spaces. If data is now the invisible framework of daily life, then architecture can reclaim its role as a civic tool: not to manage the city, but to imagine it otherwise.

This line of inquiry is directly related to the practice of French architect and publisher Paul Cournet in Rotterdam. He founded CLOUD in 2022, a multidisciplinary workshop linking architecture, research, and design specifically centered on materiality. Materiality, as the balance between matter and meaning, is the foundation upon which new design strategies for a more sustainable and just society are conceived for CLOUD. Through architectural thinking, CLOUD expands the potential of material culture to address not just buildings, but communities, systems, and futures at every scale.

Photographs: Alejandro Ramoroz

CLOUD examines the generative possibilities of materiality, working through architectural precedents and methodologies to push the discipline's boundaries beyond its conventional limits. In the design of communities, environments, and systems at different scales, the studio assumes a critical and reflective position – one that demands the body, nature, and infrastructure be brought into constant dialogue. At its core is an ongoing inquiry into architecture's role in the physical and virtual worlds we inhabit.

The studio’s portfolio includes collaborations with institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where it redesigned key public areas, as well as the creation of bespoke furniture for galleries and brands, a modular wooden housing prototype in Belgium, and a number of self-initiated research projects investigating material innovation.

Photographs: Peter Tijhuis

Cournet is also deputy editor of CAPSULE, the annual design magazine published during Milan's Salone del Mobile, and co-curator of CAPSULE PLAZA. All of which attest to his ongoing engagement in bridging theory and practice and speaking critical discourse with contemporary design.

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Words: Simone Lorusso