Current tech industry speculation relies on a vision of our future completely transformed by the broad implementation of generative artificial intelligence, the consequences of which have already begun to reconfigure our contemporary built and natural environment. As one manifestation of this, data centers—buildings which store the servers and networking equipment that host the internet—are becoming increasingly influential infrastructures, key material pieces of today’s digital world. Combining unprecedented material extraction with an unclear regulatory framework, the data center landscape is evolving across borders, both rapidly and largely without guidelines. As the use of AI expands exponentially, so does the impact of these structures, introducing urgent questions at the intersection of architecture, planning, and law: Where should data centers be built, if at all? What should their design prioritize? How will they impact the surrounding communities and environments? And perhaps most importantly: who decides?

A continuation of the League’s “Architecture Planning and International Law” series and hosted in partnership with the independent research and policy institute Data & Society, this program convenes experts in design and policy from the local to the supranational scales to better understand what informs data centers’ siting and design, encourage engaged participation in these decisions, and help steer us toward more humane infrastructure for a hybrid world.

Participants

Pedro Arrojo-Agudo is the UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation since 2020. In 2025, Arrojo-Agudo presented “The Water-Energy Nexus” to the UN Human Rights Council, which called for a moratorium on data center construction based on the sector’s lack of transparency and its significant impact on energy and water consumption as global threats. From 2016 to 2019, Arrojo-Agudo served as an elected member (MP) of the Spanish Parliament, where he was part of the International Cooperation Committee working on human rights.

Sebastián Díaz Howard-Allman is a political scientist specialising in the design of digital infrastructure policies, citizen participation, and environmental protection. From 2023 to 2026, he was a Technology and Economic Growth Advisor for the Government of Chile, where he led the design and implementation of Chile’s National Data Centers Plan, shaping a nationwide strategy for the deployment of critical digital infrastructure with a strong focus on sustainability, environmental permitting, and investment attraction.

Gillian Graber is the co-founder and executive director of Protect PT (Penn-Trafford), an organization that protects public health and preserves the natural environment in southwest Pennsylvania through grassroots organizing, policy analysis, environmental science, community education, and legal advocacy. Since early 2025, Protect PT has been working around proposed data centers in the region. Graber’s work is rooted in her experience as a mother of two and her first-hand knowledge of pollution’s negative health impact.

Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and researcher. She has led Data Mourning at Columbia GSAPP, an initiative focused on digital infrastructures and climate catastrophe. Otero also contributed to Chile’s first National Data Centers Plan, working alongside Resistencia SocioAmbiental – Quilicura and other local communities on the front lines of extractivism. In 2022, Otero received the Wheelwright Prize from the Harvard GSD for her project on the future of data storage.

This program is moderated by Maia Woluchem. Woluchem is an urban planner, educator, and technologist who has worked across government, philanthropy, civil society, and academia to preserve human rights in the digital realm. Currently, Woluchem is the director of Trustworthy Infrastructures at Data & Society, a program that researches community-driven responses to technology’s entrance into private and public lives. Her work focuses on building collective understanding around racial capitalism, democracy, and surveillance in sociotechnical systems, in both domestic and global contexts.

A welcome will be provided by Jesse LeCavalier, associate professor and director of the master of science in advanced urban design program at Cornell AAP.

Support

This program was supported by The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

This program is presented in partnership with Data & Society.
This program is hosted by The Gensler Family AAP NYC Center at Cornell University.