4 Min Lesezeit

More and more data are being digitised, slipping away from the physical world. Yet what material traces does the seemingly invisible cloud leave behind? Until 8 March 2026, the exhibition City in the Cloud: Data on the Ground at the Pinakothek der Moderne explores this very question.

The Salar de Atacama salt flat in Chile is one of the few places on Earth where lithium is found in very high concentration. The country produces approximately 79 percent of the European Union’s supply of this natural element. Around 2.2 million liters of water are evaporated to produce one ton of lithium in the world’s driest place | Photo: Catherine Hyland, 2018

What is often hailed as progress – faster access, less paper, greater efficiency – comes at a high price. The infrastructure of the digital world consumes vast amounts of energy and water, devours resources, and leaves both ecological and social footprints. City in the Cloud – Data on the Ground, organised by the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) at the Pinakothek der Moderne, reveals how the abstract world of data intervenes in our physical environment – and how the supposed immateriality of the digital has very real global consequences.

Automated tape library at Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ), used for long-term data archiving. Thousands of magnetic storage tapes are man-aged by robotic systems to ensure reliable, energy-efficient preservation of scientific data over decades. Tape storage remains a key component in large-scale research infrastructures due to its durability and low power consumption | Photo: Giulia Bruno, Architekturmuseum der TUM, 2025

What the Cloud Does to Our World

Curated by Damjan Kokalevski, the exhibition brings together everyday objects through which we connect to the digital realm – from smartphones and laptops to smart home devices, car interfaces, and countless screens. The show is divided into three sections: Elemental, Spatial, and Temporal. Its aim is to sharpen awareness of the physical existence and far-reaching impacts of the data cloud.

The first chapter, Elemental, addresses the material foundations of the digital world. Alongside early telegraph cables from the 19th century, it presents modern fibre-optic networks, highlighting the geopolitical and historical interconnections on which today’s data infrastructure rests.

The Spatial chapter focuses on data centres whose energy and water consumption have significant ecological and economic repercussions. The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Munich serves here as a case study, illustrating the political dimensions of this inconspicuous yet highly complex architecture.

Finally, the Temporal section raises the question of which data we choose to keep and which to erase. As data volumes expand exponentially and e-waste continues to grow, the act of storing itself becomes a political and ethical one.

Accompanying the exhibition is the publication City in the Cloud – Data on the Ground: Architecture and Data, edited by Cara Hähl-Pfeifer, Damjan Kokalevski, and Andres Lepik. In their essays, the authors call for greater transparency and a more conscious reflection on our use of resources — which they see as essential for a fairer and more sustainable digital future.

Brochure available for download: https://www.pinakothek-der-moderne.de/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/TUM_AM_CCDG_BROCHURE.pdf