MATERIAL INTERNET. Opportunities in the relationship between data-centers and landscape

Digital Age is approaching a new era: the global datasphere will see a remarkable growth of volume that can only be supported by an analogue expansion of the internet physical infrastructure. By focusing on data storage, the thesis investigates how data centers will change trying to figure out if this process can affect the way they dialogue with the environment and its evolution. The specific case-study concerns the Italian digital agenda for gathering the Public Administration servers in few national data centers. The complexity of the Italian territory makes their right position a challenging matter which has been tackled through the aid of a GIS-based analysis carried out by taking into account environmental risks, logistic and functional criteria. The Po River Delta area has been choose to explore the mutual integration of large-scale infrastructure and environmental processes. By working through a scenario thinking approach, it has been possible to depict three different narratives concerning the Delta future layout: each scenario investigates a different attitude to landscape transformations and the potential role of data centers in the process. Each proposal aims at provocatively understanding how climate change and environmental degradation of the Delta could be faced by the means of a datascape development envisioning data centers as a landform building typology. Going beyond their actual purpose of store, protect and save our pieces of information, data centers, as probably the most powerful expression of the material internet, could finally ground a new type of collaboration between the datasphere and its physical footprints.