A series of three evenings exploring the spatial and cultural impacts of digital technologies, curated by Hedwig van der Linden and Kevin Westerveld of Dérive. Taking place on Tuesday 20 Oct, 10 Nov and 08 Dec. 2026
Spatial and cultural consequences of digital infrastructure
As Tech Bros exert increasing influence over our society, urgent questions arise: How can we democratise digital technology? What does it mean to be human in this digital age? How can we harness digital technologies to promote our well-being and foster a just, healthy, and resilient society? For this edition of Back to School, we examine how digital technologies are reshaping the built environment, and how these transformations influence the ways we inhabit and experience it.
Through a series of public conversations, bringing people into dialogue through a series of discussions, each introduced by two experts, we explore the multiple scales at which today’s technological systems operate. From global power structures and geopolitical tensions to the spatial and cultural consequences of digital infrastructure, from hardware to images and visual culture.
Digital technologies are often presented as immaterial and inevitable. Yet behind the seamless experience of platforms, artificial intelligence, and networked devices lies a vast physical landscape of data centres, energy infrastructure, and resource extraction, as well as new forms of political power. These systems increasingly shape not only how cities function, but also how they are imagined, represented, and designed.
At the same time, architecture is becoming deeply entangled with contemporary image cultures. Buildings circulate as images before they are experienced as spaces, while digital visualisation tools, social media platforms, and algorithmic forms of mediation influence how environments are produced, consumed, and understood.
The same systems that shape how images circulate, how attention is captured, and how platforms govern perception are also reshaping territory through data centres, logistics networks, extraction, energy infrastructures, and new forms of political power. Architecture sits at the intersection of these material and visual dimensions.This lecture series wants to make these structures visible and open the conversation around this broad and urgent subject. By examining the relationships between power, representation, and space, we aim to develop a better and critical understanding of the (post)digital condition and encourage possibilities for imagining alternative futures.
Lecture Programme
Tuesday 20 October 2026, 18:00 - 21:00 SESSION #1 POWER STRUCTURES OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
On this first evening we will dive into the broader topic of digital technology, exploring its power structures and the regulations around big tech and AI in relation to our urban surroundings.
Tuesday 10 November 2026, 18:00 - 21:00 SESSION #2 EFFECTS OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN PUBLIC LIFE
The second session is focused on the impact of digitalisation on the public reals, looking at the impact on urban processes, the organisation of the city and its services. What does digitalisation mean for the way that we are using our cities?
Tuesday 08 December 2026, 18:00 - 21:00 SESSION #3 IMPACT OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES ON VISUAL CULTURE
This third and last session of the series deals with the way in which digitalisation and AI influence the architectural practice. Not just its impact on the act of designing itself, but also on the production of images and on the ways we conceive and experience space and materials.
About Dérive Dérive was founded by Hedwig van der Linden and Kevin Westerveld with the ambition of creating space within complex transition challenges. Based in Brussels and Rotterdam, the practice operates at the intersection of architecture, public space, and spatial strategy. Dérive seeks synergy between conceptual thinking and co-creative practice by creating space for dialogue and local coalitions – consciously starting from the qualities and resources of existing habitats.
