Marina Otero

Lecturer in Advanced Studies

Contact

[email protected]

Office Location

40 Kirkland 1E/1F

Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and researcher whose work lies at the intersection of critical spatial practices, ecology, technology, and activism. She is a Lecturer in Architecture at Harvard GSD and a Dean’s Visiting Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s GSAPP, where she leads the Data Mourning clinic, an educational initiative examining the relationship between digital infrastructures and climate catastrophe.

In 2022, Otero received Harvard GSD’s Wheelwright Prize for Future Storage: Architectures to Host the Metaverse, a research project investigating alternative architectural paradigms for data storage. Her work combines research, writing, exhibition-making, prototyping, and filmmaking to question the environmental, political, and territorial infrastructures of technology. She has collaborated with scientists at the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) to develop alternative models for data storage, including Computational Compost, a prototype that explores how waste heat from computation can be used to support biological processes. First presented at Tabakalera, the project received an S+T+ARTS Honorary Mention in 2025.

Her research also engages with the politics of data infrastructure at the territorial and policy level. She was invited by Chile’s Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation to participate as an expert in the development of the country’s first National Data Centers Plan, working alongside local communities affected by extractive development. She also advises governments and municipalities on data-center policies and their environmental and territorial implications.

Otero is the author of Flotando en Litio (Caniche, 2025), which examines the landscapes, waters, histories, and struggles surrounding lithium extraction in Galicia and northern Portugal. The book received the 2026 FAD Thought and Criticism Prize. She is also the author of En las Profundidades de la Nube (2024), a book on data storage and sovereignty in the age of AI.

From 2020 to 2023, Otero was Head of the MA Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven, a programme focused on design practices attuned to ecological and social challenges. From 2015 to 2022, she was Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Netherlands’ institute for architecture, design, and digital culture. There, she developed and led research programmes addressing labour, extraction, mental health, and the political dimensions of technology and architecture, including Automated Landscapes, BURN-OUT, and Lithium: States of Exhaustion. Previously, she was Director of Global Network Programming at Studio-X, Columbia GSAPP.

Her curatorial work includes After Belonging at the Oslo Architecture Triennale (2016), Work, Body, Leisure at the Dutch Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), Compulsive Desires: On Lithium Extraction and Rebellious Mountains at Galeria Municipal do Porto (2023), and Wet Dreams at MAYRIT, Madrid Design and Architecture Biennial (2024). In 2025, she co-curated Opera Aperta, the Holy See Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. The pavilion received a Special Mention as a National Participation.

Otero has co-edited numerous publications, including Automated Landscapes (2023), Lithium: States of Exhaustion (2021), A Matter of Data (2021), More-than-Human (2020), I See That I See What You Don’t See (2020), Architecture of Appropriation (2019), Work, Body, Leisure (2018), After Belonging (2016), and Promiscuous Encounters (2014), among others. Her work has been published and presented internationally across architecture, art, design, and digital culture. This work has been awarded by The Graham Foundation, Design Trust, and the CCA, among others.

As a designer, curator, and filmmaker, she works across exhibitions, installations, publications, and moving image. She has co-directed several films, including Computational Compost, Building for Quantum (2025), and Where the Water Ends (2026). Building for Quantum, co-directed with Manuel Correa, was presented in the main exhibition of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale and is part of the permanent collection of MUDAC in Lausanne. In 2026, it received an Honorary Mention from the S+T+ARTS Prize. She has also designed exhibitions for major cultural institutions, including the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

Otero is a member of the Architecture Advisory Committee of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) in Madrid. She holds a PhD, awarded cum laude in 2016 by ETSA Madrid. Her dissertation, Evanescent Institutions, examined emerging paradigms for cultural institutions and the political implications of mobile and transient structures.