Critical Geography of the CloudYiqiu Liu
Artificial intelligence is transforming our world and consuming it at an unprecedented speed. While marketed as ethereal, the cloud-powering AI casts a vast and resource-intensive shadow, drawing on land, energy, water, minerals, and labor. With tech giants building data centres the size of Manhattan and climate targets slipping, we need to understand what the cloud is, where it operates, and how we can respond to it.
This talk provides a framework to look beyond your AI prompt. We will trace the often invisible and overlooked digital infrastructure that makes it run; track the outsourced resource flows across territories; surface the uneven power relations that make the human and non-human extraction possible; and all the way to its potential post-human aftermath. You’ll leave with tools to map your own cloud, and the critical lens to begin to imagine a more just and sustainable digital future.
Dr. Yiqiu Liu is an urbanist, architect, and principal investigator for the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS) project The Production of Cloud: Territorial and Architectural Strategies for AI’s Socio-Environmental Footprint. Emerging from her doctoral research, the Production of Cloud (2017–) is a long-term research, teaching and design programme initiated and led by Dr. Yiqiu Liu at ETH Zurich and TU Munich, building frameworks for the theorisation, design, and governance of data centres across the United States, China, and Europe.
Yiqiu’s research traces peripheral urbanization beyond the city, developing vocabularies and methods that transcend Western-centric models. She received her doctorate from the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich, in 2023, with her dissertation nominated for the ETH Medal, and holds a BA and MA in Architecture from Southeast University, Nanjing, both with distinction. She is an associated researcher at the ETH AI Center and a fellow of the European Talent Academy 2026.
She is also a practicing architect and urban designer with experience across continents. She has led several award-winning projects with Christian Kerez, received two 2024 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, and frequently consults public and private stakeholders on spatial development in Asia and Europe.
