Datapolis in exhibition Vers une architecture: Reflections

25 April – 23 November 2025, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich

With Vers une architecture, Le Corbusier created a manifesto that laid the foundations for modern architecture. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of this collection of essays, the exhibition of the same name reflects the collected texts while considering current architectural discourses and future perspectives.

About the exhibition

The Pavillon Le Corbusier takes a contemporary look at the legacy of the inimitable architect. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture – a manifesto and cornerstone for modern architecture – this exhibition invites us to reconsider architectural developments and examine Le Corbusier’s work from a contemporary perspective. Eight international essays comment and reflect on the topics and concepts of Le Corbusier’s time and place them in the context of current architectural discourse and future perspectives. The spectrum of subjects ranges from incomplete modernist ruins to the house as a machine to architectural visions using AI. The publication Datapolis is also part of the exhibition.

Go for more information about the exhibition to the website of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.

About the book

Data has become a critical component of our lives ‒ when was the last time that you spent 24 hours offline? Despite such ubiquity, we hardly comprehend the mechanisms of this ‘infosphere’, a complex world that can be glimpsed through tangible and intangible means.

Datapolis looks into the materiality of data, its inherent ethical and political contradictions as well as cultural and environmental footprints, by following two main trajectories: the first one attempts to define what ‘the cloud’ is and how it operates. From the systems and infrastructures behind the Internet to the apparatus, gizmos and buildings that can transcend scales and temporal dimensions. The second one explores how data penetrates our existence, not only by affecting the ways we live and work, or design and make cities, but by offering distinct ways of life and organization that otherwise would not have been possible.

Through various visual and textual materials, this book speculates on the ways in which architecture can engage with data and digital technology beyond its mere instrumental use in making (smart) cities.

Datapolis is available in our webshop and in your (local) bookstore!