TUM Architecture Museum at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich
Exhibition recommendation: All Digital? CITY IN THE CLOUD - DATA ON THE GROUND - Data Infrastructures from an Architectural and Political Perspective
DURATION: OCTOBER 16, 2025 TO MARCH 8, 2026 - TUM Architecture Museum at the Pinakothek der Moderne in the Munich Kunstareal (English, Italiano, Français, Deutsch)
Munich.
The digital cloud is omnipresent: but where exactly is it? In the
exhibition CITY IN THE CLOUD - DATA ON THE GROUND, the Pinakothek der
Moderne goes on a search. The cloud appears in smartphones, laptops,
smart home devices, car interfaces, and countless displays in urban
spaces. Swipe and stream contain a vast and rapidly growing data
infrastructure: data centers in cities and remote regions, submarine
cables, and satellites. These mostly invisible structures determine our
way of life, communication, and administration – while simultaneously
consuming enormous amounts of land, energy, and raw materials. - A companion book will be published for the exhibition -
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| Pinakothek der Moderne in the Kunstareal in Munich, photo collage: Helga Waess (Pressefotoarchiv - Cover Kunst-Kultur-Blog) |
Despite their far-reaching impact, data infrastructures are rarely discussed from an architectural or political perspective.
Architectural research can reveal these hidden material and political entanglements. The aim of the exhibition is to examine the cloud—from its historical origins to future possibilities—and to advocate for a more integrative approach to the design and planning of data infrastructures into social and political consciousness.
The exhibition is divided into three themes:
Elementary - Spatial - Temporal,
and unfolds around a series of key questions:
What does the digital cloud consist of?
The first chapter reveals the elements of the cloud. We peer deep into the ocean and trace the submarine cables that now transmit more than 95% of global communications. From the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable in the 19th century to today's global fiber optic networks, these infrastructures reveal geopolitical and colonial entanglements. Objects from the Deutsches Museum illustrate these histories from scientific and material perspectives.
The chapter also addresses data centers, which are evolving into new sites of power. Far from being neutral spaces, they consume enormous amounts of energy and fresh water and occupy increasingly larger areas. With the exponential growth of artificial intelligence (AI), the demand for new facilities is rising rapidly. The exhibition highlights their architectural presence, their political dimensions, and their ecological costs, with case studies from Germany and abroad, including the Munich Leibniz Supercomputing Center in Garching.
Digital Data – The New Currency?
Data has become the engine of new forms of extraction. The expansion of data economies depends on critical raw materials such as lithium, copper, cobalt, and tin. This chapter examines lithium and tin mining in particular, focusing on the impacts of this raw material extraction on local ecosystems and communities.
It addresses the battle for water rights in one of the largest lithium mines in Chile's Atacama Desert, as well as the ecological and social costs of tin mining on the Indonesian island of Bangka. It also examines efforts to secure lithium and other critical raw materials in Europe. By tracing these material flows, the exhibition addresses the true price we must pay for the data economy.
Is the city more than a computer?
The so-called smart city uses data to "optimize" and "manage" complexity. This section examines how urban environments are being transformed by digital systems and poses the question: What if data were used to empower citizens instead of serving surveillance capitalism? A case study developed in collaboration with Digital Twin Munich proposes data as a public infrastructure and a tool for civic engagement.
Furthermore, the exhibition explores the transformation of architectural practice through data modeling, machine learning, and AI, opening new debates about how data can transform the design, construction, and demolition of buildings.
Save or delete data?
Given the increasing demand for electricity, water, and enormous amounts of electronic waste, the decision about which data we keep and which we delete has become a political act. In an age of excessive backup and storage practices, the question of which data we preserve and under what conditions is more urgent than ever. Digital archives play a crucial role in shaping historical records, while AI training raises new questions about bias, access, and memory. Can we distinguish between noise and valuable information in this vast sea of data? And can we ethically navigate "black boxes" and data biases?
This chapter encourages reflection on how data infrastructures influence our remembering and forgetting, and how architectural work is tied to digital systems. It asks how we might deal with data in the future, how we might separate ourselves from what is no longer needed, and how we might design beyond the logic of unlimited storage capacities.
PUBLICATION
A companion book will be published for the exhibition:
City in the Cloud – Data on the Ground: Architecture and Data,
edited by Cara Hähl-Pfeifer, Damjan Kokalevski, and Andres Lepik, published by ArchiTangle, Berlin (German: ISBN 978-3-9817790-6-6, English: ISBN 978-3-9817790-5-9; €58).
The book "City in the Cloud – Data on the Ground"
It brings together perspectives from architecture, media studies, technology, art, and political theory to illuminate the elementary, spatial, and temporal dimensions of data architectures.
The publication maps the social, ecological, and political impacts of ubiquitous digital connectivity and opens up spaces for a necessary rethinking of the use of raw materials, global justice, and long-term responsibility towards future generations.
With contributions from James Bridle, Giulia Bruno, Teresa Fankhänel, Cara Hähl-Pfeifer, Max Hallinan, Mél Hogan, Catherine Hyland, Damjan Kokalevski, Andres Lepik, Niklas Maak, Marija Marić, Anna-Maria Meister, Marina Otero Verzier, Trevor Paglen, Godofredo Enes Pereira, Andra Pop-Jurj, Alison Powell, Māra Starka, and Rafael Uriarte.
DATA TALKS
As part of the accompanying program, the museum is launching the Data Talks series—seven public conversations that will take place live and be published as a podcast. They bring together experts and the public to explore the themes of the exhibition in more depth.
Exhibition Dates
- November 6, 2025 – Exhuming Earth: European Lithium Futures (with Godofredo Pereira and Zinnwald Lithium)
- December 4, 2025 – Drawing Matters: Data Models in Architecture (with Michael Drobnik, Herzog & de Meuron, and Allplan)
- December 18, 2025 – Behind the Scenes: Narrating the Raw and the Overcooked (with the curatorial team)
- January 15, 2026 – Designing Data Spaces: LRZ Garching (with the Leibniz Supercomputing Center and Giulia Bruno)
- January 29, 2026 – Urban Data Governance (with the City of Munich, GeodatenService)
- February 19, 2026 – Digital Archives: Loss, Grievances, and Temporalities (with the KIT Professorship for Architectural Theory and saai, Archive for Architecture and Civil Engineering)
- March 5, 2026 – Closing event. The series concludes with the film screening "Building for Quantum" by Marina Otero Verzier.
Quelle - Pressemitteilung: Pinakothek der Moderne
