Exhibition Opening "City in the Cloud – Data on the Ground"

On Wednesday, we had the pleasure of joining the team at the Architekturmuseum der TUM in Munich for the opening of their latest exhibition, City in the Cloud – Data on the Ground: The Architecture of Data. In collaboration with the curatorial team, we also co-published the accompanying book, which explores the often unseen physical infrastructures that underpin our digital world.

Data may appear immaterial, but it relies on extensive global networks: the extraction of raw materials, the deployment of thousands of undersea cables, and an exponentially growing number of energy-intensive data centers. While these data infrastructures shape global economies and politics, they truly do far more by profoundly impacting local communities, ecosystems, and labor conditions—realms so often rooted in (neo)colonial structures of exploitation.

Our publication is both a documentation of the exhibited content, and—with its BOOK+ extension—serves as an archive for image, audio and video material that brings the case studies to life. It also provides up-to-date information on the progress of ongoing projects!

Scroll through a few examples of the connection between the exhibition and our book and get your copy here (also available in German).

Exhibition photography © Felix Betzenbichler, 3e8.studio.

“In 1850, the first submarine cable was laid between Dover and the United Kingdom and Calais in France—a critical endeavor that was severed just a few hours later by a fisherman’s anchor. However, a year later, a second attempt was successful, thanks to a more effective coating material made from the gutta-percha plant. This marked the beginning of the global submarine cable industry. The production process was complex and required specifically designed ships, such as the Faraday I.”

Exhibition photography © Felix Betzenbichler, 3e8.studio.

Both the exhibition and the book showcase the work of photographer Giulia Bruno, who documented a visit to the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Garching (Germany), which exemplifies an unusually high level of design among data centers.

Illustration © CPWH, 2025

The Salar de Atacama salt flat in Chile is one of the planet’s richest sources of lithium—a critical element powering our digital age. British photographer Catherine Hyland’s 2018 image series captures the surreal and often overlooked process of lithium extraction in this remote landscape.

Her photographs are featured among a diverse array of exhibits in the opening section of the show. Visitors can explore the exhibition layout in greater detail through 3D visualizations, accessible via BOOK+ codes embedded in the publication.