Marina Otero. Photo: Boudewijn Bollmann

Harvard University Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) is pleased to name Marina Otero the winner of the 2022 Wheelwright Prize, a grant to support investigative approaches to contemporary architecture, with an emphasis on globally minded research. With her winning proposal Future Storage: Architectures to Host the Metaverse, Otero will examine new architecture paradigms for storing data and how reimagining digital infrastructures could meet the unprecedented demands facing the world today. The field research, data collection, and prototype development will all result in the first open-source manual for global data center architecture design containing examples of ecological, circular, and egalitarian data storage models. As with past Wheelwright winners, the 100,000 USD prize is intended to fund two years of Otero’s research and travel...

Marina Otero Wins Harvard GSD’s 2022 Wheelwright Prize