Building for Quantum is a video installation combining film, 3D animation, and a physical structure to explore how quantum technologies reshape our understanding of matter and space, while relying on architectural conventions to enable their operations. It documents the construction of the Quantum Basque Center in Donostia–San Sebastián, which hosts one of Europe’s most powerful quantum computers, IBM Quantum System Two, and engages with the material, technological, and philosophical dimensions of this infrastructure.

The work combines documentary film and animation to bring the scientists’ ideas to life. The physical structure reflects the design of Quantum System Two.
As quantum computing redefines the boundaries of knowledge, the film examines the daily challenges of building its architecture and manipulating matter, as well as the human, technical, and labor efforts involved. Scientists, architects, construction workers, and public officials reflect on how quantum computing might reveal new ways of understanding the world. Through the lens of quantum theory, the world appears fluid, non-binary, and open to multiple interpretations; for its operation, however, it depends on Cartesian material practices. The film navigates the intersection of the physical and the philosophical within quantum architecture, juxtaposing the tangible materials of brick and mortar with the meticulous precision required to maintain near-perfect vacuum chambers at temperatures colder than deep space.
Energy is fundamental to all these endeavors: on the construction site, it manifests through restless movement and transformation; within the quantum machine, it must be meticulously contained. The operations of qubits and their interactions are shielded from errors caused by thermal vibrations, electromagnetic interference, and other disturbances. The film explores the paradox of needing isolation from the surroundings to generate knowledge about the world we inhabit.

Film Directors: Manuel Correa Marina Otero Verzier
Installation design: Manuel Correa, Marina Otero Verzier, Manu Sancho
3D modelling: Manu Sancho
Sound design: Emil Olsen
Project managment: Ana Robles

With support from: Creative Industries Funds NL; MIVAU (Ministerio de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana, Gobierno de España); BasQ – Basque Government; Columbia University GSAPP

Marina Otero Verzier (ES) is an architect and researcher. She received Harvard’s 2022 Wheelwright Prize for her work on data storage, led Data Mourning at Columbia GSAPP, and advised Chile’s first National Data Centers Plan. Author of En las Profundidades de la Nube (2024). Former Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut and Head of MA Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven. Curator of Opera Aperta (Special Mention, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2025).

Manuel Correa (CO) is an artist and filmmaker working with trauma and transitional justice, formerly part of Forensic Architecture. His work has been shown at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, Rotterdam Film Festival, and Kunsthaus Graz, among others.

Marina Otero Verzier and Manuel Correa have been collaborating since 2023 and are currently engaged in four joint art projects that bring together their shared interests in architecture, memory, digital infrastructure, and human rights.

A quantum computer is one of the most advanced feats of physics and engineering ever attempted. The very properties that make it powerful are so strange that experts struggle to explain them in everyday terms, without the comfort of precise but counterintuitive mathematics. Marina Otero’s Building for Quantum plays on the tension between a simple structure—cement, bricks, and forms that were once the height of our technology but now seem mundane—and the seemingly magical device it will house. Long static shots of construction are interrupted by physicists scribbling quantum diagrams on the unfinished walls—another layer of quantumness applied to the building—hinting that the magic is just a machine. Yet the architectural and physical requirements needed to shield the quantum chips lead to a deeper, unsettling paradox: the quantum computer can only simulate the universe that contains it if it is perfectly isolated from it.