Marina Otero Verzier

She is a Dean’s Visiting Assistant Professor at GSAPP Columbia University, New York, where she directs Data Mourning, an educational initiative focused on the intersection between digital infrastructures and climate catastrophe, at the invitation of Dean Jaque. In 2022, Otero received Harvard’s Wheelwright Prize for a project on the future of data storage. She collaborated with the DIPC Supercomputing Centre to develop alternative data storage models such as the Computational Compost project, presented for the first time at Tabakalera. Otero was also invited by the Chilean Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation to participate as an expert in the development of Chile’s first National Plan for Data Centres, together with Resistencia SocioAmbiental-Quilicura and other local communities and activists on the front line of the fight against extractivism. Otero is the author of En las Profundidades de la Nube (2024), a book about data storage and sovereignty in the age of AI. The book proposes new paradigms and aesthetics for data storage, integrating architecture, preservation and digital culture. Since 2023, Otero has been a member of the Architecture Advisory Committee of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) in Madrid. She has been a member of the Alumni Board of Columbia GSAPP since 2023. Otero studied at TU Delft, ETSA Madrid and Columbia GSAPP. In 2016, she received her PhD from ETSA Madrid.