Architectures of Artificial Intelligence
part of the Global Free Unit
part of the Global Free Unit
Architectures of Artificial Intelligence
As pervasive and invasive as the discourse on artificial intelligence has become, marked by a growing urgency to examine its transformative potential across all industries, the spatial infrastructures required to sustain AI remain underexplored from a design standpoint. This project asks: what role can architectural designers and territorial planners play in designing the envelopes and networks of future computation? What if our professional input became foundational, at this pivotal moment of technological transformation?
The Architectures of AI Design Think Tank is a design think tank tasked with interrogating the physical architectures, urban morphologies, and planetary systems that enable the delivery of computational power necessary for artificial intelligence. While generative models, algorithms, and biases that shape our collective futures are widely visualized and represented in the public imagination, the spatial infrastructure behind AI technologies remains obfuscated and underexplored. Building on past projects that map complex contexts of social upheaval and environmental transformation, this Lab maps the geographies of AI; its datascapes, resource dependencies, environmental tools, digital divides, and sociopolitical ripples. We will research, contest, and propose how the physical manifestations of AI may shape the conditions of civic life, human movement, equity, and cultural production, staking out the roles and responsibilities that we believe designers and spatial thinkers must play in this process.
As pervasive and invasive as the discourse on artificial intelligence has become, marked by a growing urgency to examine its transformative potential across all industries, the spatial infrastructures required to sustain AI remain underexplored from a design standpoint. This project asks: what role can architectural designers and territorial planners play in designing the envelopes and networks of future computation? What if our professional input became foundational, at this pivotal moment of technological transformation?
The Architectures of AI Design Think Tank is a design think tank tasked with interrogating the physical architectures, urban morphologies, and planetary systems that enable the delivery of computational power necessary for artificial intelligence. While generative models, algorithms, and biases that shape our collective futures are widely visualized and represented in the public imagination, the spatial infrastructure behind AI technologies remains obfuscated and underexplored. Building on past projects that map complex contexts of social upheaval and environmental transformation, this Lab maps the geographies of AI; its datascapes, resource dependencies, environmental tools, digital divides, and sociopolitical ripples. We will research, contest, and propose how the physical manifestations of AI may shape the conditions of civic life, human movement, equity, and cultural production, staking out the roles and responsibilities that we believe designers and spatial thinkers must play in this process.
Design Think Tank as Part of the Global Free Unit
In the summer of 2025, we will convene an intensive two-week design think tank that invites emerging voices in architecture, urbanism, the arts, and allied fields. Hosted with the support of pioneering academic institutions across the Americas, North Africa, and Scandinavia, this laboratory will operate as both a site of inquiry and a space for proposition. The culmination of this work will be publicly unveiled in the fall of 2025, at a prestigious international forum—a collective act of speculative design and critical reflection.
The Global Free Unit is a distributed network for research and education in contexts of rapid change, through live project classrooms and research labs all over the world, including Egypt, Sami lands of Scandinavia, Turkey and Ukraine.
Reference images, right to left:
1. Bird's eye view of Three Mile Island defunct Nuclear Plant
2. Interior photograph of a performance at The Sphere, Las Vegas.
3. Soviet early warning radar system 'Duga', located near Chernobyl, Ukraine.
4. GIS mapping 3D visualization drawing, Sol y Sombra Global Free Unit Think Tank /2019.
5. Konrad Wachsmann perspective, Architecture D'Aujourd'Hui, 1960.
6. GIS map of undersea cables around North Africa.
7. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse animated film still, Sony.
8. Solar panels at data center in St. Ghislain, Belgium.
1. Bird's eye view of Three Mile Island defunct Nuclear Plant
2. Interior photograph of a performance at The Sphere, Las Vegas.
3. Soviet early warning radar system 'Duga', located near Chernobyl, Ukraine.
4. GIS mapping 3D visualization drawing, Sol y Sombra Global Free Unit Think Tank /2019.
5. Konrad Wachsmann perspective, Architecture D'Aujourd'Hui, 1960.
6. GIS map of undersea cables around North Africa.
7. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse animated film still, Sony.
8. Solar panels at data center in St. Ghislain, Belgium.
1. MACRO : Map AI infrastructure on a planetary scale
We will map networks of power, jurisdiction, financing, extraction, and material assembly, including, but not limited to, undersea cabling, major data center locations, and other concentrations of AI infrastructure. This includes identifying where these systems are visible and where they are governed from. How they organize planetary space, and whether this organization intentional.
2. GEO : Investigate axes of power and governance of AI
We will investigate and visualize how the asymmetrical distribution of data centers and computational systems counter or reinforce the political and economic hegemony of past colonial structures.
3. TERRA : Show environmental entanglement
As AI proliferates, what are the ecological consequences? We will model how resource extraction and energy consumption support AI and propose how these systems can be reconfigured within planetary limits.
4. LOCI : Design the data center as common ground
We will rethink the typology of data centers beyond the pragmatic and test whether these infrastructures can be reimagined as civic architectures, landscapes of ecological repair, cultural exchange, or aesthetic innovation.
5. SIGNA : Model cosmology of AI
We will endeavor to represent, through image, text and ritual, how AI is impacting human cultures, opening a discourse on how AI may assimilate, transform, or fracture systems of knowledge embedded in places and traditions. We will enact and subvert the tensions between algorithmic universality and the preservation of vernacular, indigenous, and situated epistemologies.
We will map networks of power, jurisdiction, financing, extraction, and material assembly, including, but not limited to, undersea cabling, major data center locations, and other concentrations of AI infrastructure. This includes identifying where these systems are visible and where they are governed from. How they organize planetary space, and whether this organization intentional.
2. GEO : Investigate axes of power and governance of AI
We will investigate and visualize how the asymmetrical distribution of data centers and computational systems counter or reinforce the political and economic hegemony of past colonial structures.
3. TERRA : Show environmental entanglement
As AI proliferates, what are the ecological consequences? We will model how resource extraction and energy consumption support AI and propose how these systems can be reconfigured within planetary limits.
4. LOCI : Design the data center as common ground
We will rethink the typology of data centers beyond the pragmatic and test whether these infrastructures can be reimagined as civic architectures, landscapes of ecological repair, cultural exchange, or aesthetic innovation.
5. SIGNA : Model cosmology of AI
We will endeavor to represent, through image, text and ritual, how AI is impacting human cultures, opening a discourse on how AI may assimilate, transform, or fracture systems of knowledge embedded in places and traditions. We will enact and subvert the tensions between algorithmic universality and the preservation of vernacular, indigenous, and situated epistemologies.
Five Scales
These research vectors, pursued through mapping, visualization, and speculative design, will articulate frameworks for understanding and reshaping the infrastructures of AI, offering not mere critique but provocative and well-grounded solutions for real-world application.
Design Think Tank Model
This Design Think Tank is enriched by contributions from a transdisciplinary cohort of voices, including philosophers, artists, historians, urbanists, and technologists. Expert lectures, workshops, and debates will ground the work within a broader intellectual and cultural matrix. Simultaneously, we will project our research and proposals outward, engaging policymakers, industry leaders, and activists in this critical dialogue."
Theory and Praxis
The Architectures of AI Design Think Tank seeks not to merely respond to the conditions of an AI-driven future but to imagine its infrastructures anew. What forms of architecture, urbanism, and design might emerge as both critique and catalyst? This is a project of urgency and consequence, driven by the belief that the design of our infrastructures is the design of our futures.
Join us in this pursuit. The work begins now.
These research vectors, pursued through mapping, visualization, and speculative design, will articulate frameworks for understanding and reshaping the infrastructures of AI, offering not mere critique but provocative and well-grounded solutions for real-world application.
Design Think Tank Model
This Design Think Tank is enriched by contributions from a transdisciplinary cohort of voices, including philosophers, artists, historians, urbanists, and technologists. Expert lectures, workshops, and debates will ground the work within a broader intellectual and cultural matrix. Simultaneously, we will project our research and proposals outward, engaging policymakers, industry leaders, and activists in this critical dialogue."
Theory and Praxis
The Architectures of AI Design Think Tank seeks not to merely respond to the conditions of an AI-driven future but to imagine its infrastructures anew. What forms of architecture, urbanism, and design might emerge as both critique and catalyst? This is a project of urgency and consequence, driven by the belief that the design of our infrastructures is the design of our futures.
Join us in this pursuit. The work begins now.
2021 Design Think Tank
mapping the venezuelan amazon
Impact
The Architectures of AI Design Think Tank aims to cultivate the capacity to design for change in an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.
By fostering dialogue between architecture, technology, and governance, we aim to set new standards for equitable and just design of AI infrastructures, in consideration of their role in shaping planetary, urban, and civic futures.
Through foundational research, we will establish a best-practice guide for architects, students, and professionals, offering critical methodologies for designing AI-driven spatial infrastructures. Our unique approach integrates GIS mapping, expert-led lectures, and speculative design proposals, ensuring a comprehensive exploration of AI’s spatial implications.
Key Outputs:
The Architectures of AI Design Think Tank aims to cultivate the capacity to design for change in an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.
By fostering dialogue between architecture, technology, and governance, we aim to set new standards for equitable and just design of AI infrastructures, in consideration of their role in shaping planetary, urban, and civic futures.
Through foundational research, we will establish a best-practice guide for architects, students, and professionals, offering critical methodologies for designing AI-driven spatial infrastructures. Our unique approach integrates GIS mapping, expert-led lectures, and speculative design proposals, ensuring a comprehensive exploration of AI’s spatial implications.
Key Outputs:
- GIS mapping and spatial analysis of AI infrastructures.
- Expert-led lectures and workshops featuring leading voices in the field.
- Speculative design proposals envisioning future AI-driven spaces.
- Public presentation at an international architecture exhibition in October 2025.
How to Get Involved
We are seeking institutional support and strategic partnerships. Institutional support is open to higher education institutions, technology leaders, local governments, real estate developers looking to shape the discourse on AI’s physical and planetary footprint.
Ways to collaborate with us:
We are seeking institutional support and strategic partnerships. Institutional support is open to higher education institutions, technology leaders, local governments, real estate developers looking to shape the discourse on AI’s physical and planetary footprint.
Ways to collaborate with us:
- Partnerships to support the initiative and integrate our work into ongoing research and teaching.
- Student sponsorships, enabling emerging architects and designers to participate.
- Postdoc and faculty involvement, funding researchers to contribute as instructors.
- Sponsorship, providing financial support for the development and dissemination of our work.
- Commissioning research, collaborating on specific aspects of AI’s spatial and environmental impact.
Global Free Unit
- Xenia AdjoubeiSenior Fellow, Global Free Unit. Senior Consultant, SystematicaXenia is a urban designer and researcher into emergent technologies and new labour economies. She leads business strategy for Systematica US and teaches on the MS in Urban Design Program at Pratt Institute, New York.
Her academic research projects on environmental diplomacy and climate justice have been showcased at exhibitions internationally, notably, the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 and Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019. She is currently Fellow at the Inclusive Ecologies Incubator, where she works on the FIELD bioarts project, looking into grass-based plastics as a renewable material for construction. Prior to coming to New York, she was Lead Researcher in the Global Free Unit, a network for education through live projects in contexts of rapid economic and political change, where she led initiatives such as the New Rural Design Think Tank, and the Sol y Sombra mapping project, which developed complex territorial modeling tools for the Amazon. - Robert MullFounder, Global Free Unit. Director or Quality & Innovation, PublicaAn architect, educator and urbanist, Robert is former Director of Architecture and Dean of the Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design in London. He has taught widely in the UK and internationally and held visiting professorships in Vienna, Innsbruck, Umeå and Izmir
Robert is a founding member of the architecture collective NATO and has worked on urban projects and research in many contexts including India, China, Cuba, Korea, the US, Russia, Ukraine and within the refugee crises in Turkey, Greece and France. Robert is Adjunct Professor of Architecture at the University of Limerick and teaches at Umeå University. Robert also leads the Global Free Unit, a transnational educational structure with academic, research, NGO and institutional partners focusing on live projects within areas of displacement and institutions including prisons, schools and communities. Robert is currently working with partners in Ukraine in support of the Kharkiv School of Architecture. - We are looking for collaborators to bring this project to realization. Please get in touch if you are interested.
Senior Researchers
- Augusta FišerytėAoAI Senior ResearcherAugusta is an urban designer and researcher, having completed her degree in architecture at Cardiff University, she is finishing her specialization in Geospatial design and research at Delft University.
Previously, Augusta led the Experiments Platform at the Architektūros fondas Lithuanian National Centre for Architecture. - Kasimir Suter WinterAoAI Research Assistant, Co-founder Parti DesignA regenerative architect and strategic designer from NYC. Kasimir is based in Umeå and working on the great transition at Parti Design. Building the bridges from our current world to an emerging future where human needs are met within the planetary boundaries.
- Karina Suter WinterAoAI Research Assistant, Co-founder Parti DesignArchitect, graphic designer, artist and co-design facilitator. While studying for her B.Arch in Prague, Karina was a founding member of Design Disco, a nonprofit teaching teenagers design skills through hands-on design build workshops. From this experience she went on to employ the design process for creative problem solving and the empowerment of people through design education.
