Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and researcher. She is 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 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 In the Depths of the Cloud (2024), a book about data storage and sovereignty in the age of artificial intelligence. The book proposes new paradigms and aesthetics for data storage, integrating architecture, preservation and digital culture.
Otero was Director of the Master in Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven from 2020 to 2023. From 2015 to 2022, she was Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut, where she led initiatives focused on labour, extraction, and mental health from an architectural and post-anthropocentric perspective, including ‘Automated Landscapes,’ ‘BURN-OUT,’ and ‘Lithium: States of Exhaustion.’ Previously, she was Director of Global Network Programming at Studio-X, Columbia GSAPP.
Otero has curated exhibitions such as Wet Dreams at Mayrit, Bienal de Diseño y Arquitectura de Madrid, CentroCentro (2024), Compulsive Desires: On Lithium Extraction and Rebellious Mountains at the Municipal Gallery of Porto (2023), Work, Body, Leisure at the Netherlands Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), and After Belonging at the Oslo Architecture Triennale (2016). He has co-edited Automated Landscapes (2023), Lithium: States of Exhaustion (2021), A Matter of Data (2021), More-than-Human (2020), Architecture of Appropriation (2019), Work, Body, Leisure (2018), and After Belonging (2016), among others.
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 is a member of the Alumni Board of Columbia GSAPP since 2023. Otero studied at TU Delft, ETSA Madrid and Columbia GSAPP. In 2016, he received his PhD from ETSA Madrid.