Situated design practices¶
The course “Situated Design Practice” explores how design must abandon the detached, universalist perspective of traditional engineering and instead immerse themselves in specific geographical and community contexts. By analyzing specific situations, the practice moves beyond abstract theory to understand how urban growth, infrastructure, and digital systems impact lived realities.
- Infrastructure and Materiality of Computation – Barcelona Supercomputing Center
This scenario examined the physical and environmental footprint of large-scale computational infrastructures through the case of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).
Although the BSC supports scientific research and employs over 1,500 workers, its presence reveals the hidden material costs of digital systems:
-Environmental Impact: Supercomputers require enormous amounts of energy and water for cooling, creating tension in regions like Catalonia that face water scarcity. Proposed solutions such as zero-water cooling and liquid immersion cooling attempt to mitigate this burden, yet they do not resolve the deeper ethical question: how many natural resources should be consumed for technological advancement?
-Labor and Power Dynamics: While generating high-skilled employment, such infrastructures also raise concerns about job displacement, algorithmic power, and data privacy.
This visit produced ambivalence: technology can serve global good (e.g., climate modeling), yet it simultaneously intensifies ecological strain and centralizes political and economic power.
- The Shrinking Soil of El Prat – Llobregat Delta & Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport
This case focused on territorial conflict between global infrastructure expansion and local ecological and agricultural systems.
-Agricultural Shrinkage: The expansion of the airport and metropolitan development have drastically reduced available farmland. A striking consequence is the emergence of artichoke monoculture—an ecological simplification driven by hostile environmental conditions and soil depletion.
-Ecological Consequences: Infrastructure expansion has destroyed protected natural areas, demonstrating how technical “upgrades” function as irreversible spatial interventions.
-Social Displacement: Long-standing communities have been displaced, disrupting generational livelihoods and social structures.
This scenario illustrates how decisions justified as serving the “greater good” often prioritize global connectivity and economic growth over local habitability and biodiversity.
- Digital Labor and Neoliberal Dependencies – Kenya
The third session explored the invisible human labor sustaining digital economies and AI systems.
-Platform Dependency: Online workers (including performers and content creators) operate under constant algorithmic pressure. The internet acts as both employer and controller, fostering a “master-slave” dynamic in which visibility equals survival.
-Over-Reliance on AI: Entire value chains have become dependent on automated systems, raising concerns about long-term human relevance and autonomy.
This scenario exposes the contradiction of a supposedly decentralized internet that now produces extreme global asymmetries and psychological exploitation.
- Surveillance as Modern Torture at the EU Border – Lesbos
The final session investigated the role of AI and surveillance technologies in migration control at European borders. -Smart Borders: Drones, biometric scanners, thermal cameras, and motion detection systems are used to monitor migration flows, particularly in areas like Lesbos.
-Designed Violence: Border technologies are not neutral tools; they are embedded within systems designed to deter migration through psychological and physical pressure.
-Persistent Surveillance: Migrants experience constant monitoring in camps, producing a condition described as “modern-day torture”—a continuous state of stress, fear, and dehumanization.
-Transformation of Social Structures: Temporary migrant communities reshape concepts such as family and belonging under conditions of displacement and surveillance.
This scenario reveals how technological design can become an instrument of systemic control, embedding political agendas into material infrastructures.
Reflections and design studio¶
My research project, the decentralized modular bicycle system, is positioned as a counter-model to extractive growth logics.
Rather than relying on globalized mass production, the project proposes locally manufacturable, repairable, and adaptable mobility modules embedded in specific urban and peri-urban communities. The bicycle becomes a form of situated infrastructure: small-scale, resilient, and socially rooted.
The project is not simply about transportation, but about redistributing production capacity, strengthening local technical knowledge, and designing mobility systems that reinforce autonomy instead of dependency.
- Decentralization as Counter-Infrastructure
The modular bicycle system proposes an alternative to centralized industrial production by enabling distributed manufacturing, local assembly, and community-based repair. The bicycle becomes a small-scale infrastructure that redistributes production capacity back to local contexts.
- Design for Situated Adaptability (Not Universal Standardization)
To avoid the risks of monoculture, the modules should be adaptable to different climates, materials, cultural practices, and maintenance ecosystems. Instead of one universal solution, the system must allow contextual modification and variation.
- Skill Preservation and Community Empowerment
Rather than eliminating human involvement through over-automation, the system should encourage learning, repair culture, and local craftsmanship. The modular logic can empower communities to build, modify, and maintain their own mobility systems, strengthening technical knowledge and social bonds.
- Resilience Over Efficiency
Instead of optimizing only for speed, scale, and cost reduction, the project should prioritize long-term resilience: repairability, material circularity, supply-chain independence, and durability. The objective is autonomy and sustainability rather than maximum growth.