IAAC at Mobile World Capital Barcelona 2026: Architecture Inside the Digital Cloud
As tradition dictates, the Congress was inaugurated by His Majesty the King of Spain, alongside institutional representatives and leaders from the global technology sector. Each year, Mobile World Congress gathers thousands of innovators, companies and researchers in Barcelona, positioning the city as one of the world’s leading platforms for technological exchange.
Within this context, IAAC introduced architecture as a medium capable of translating digital systems, robotic processes and material experimentation into spatial experience.
At the centre of the pavilion stood Digital Cloud, an architectural installation designed and produced by IAAC.
The timber lattice structure materialises the invisible infrastructures that sustain our digital world — the networks of data, knowledge and collaboration that power contemporary cities and economies. Rather than representing the cloud as an abstract concept, the installation transforms global connectivity into a spatial environment visitors can physically inhabit.
Constructed as a lightweight wooden mesh suspended above the exhibition space, Digital Cloud reflects the technological ecosystem that has grown around Mobile World Congress and Mobile World Capital Barcelona over the past two decades. Through architecture, the project establishes a dialogue between technological innovation and ecological responsibility, translating digital connectivity into an architectural language.
IAAC also contributed to Crafting the Future, an immersive installation developed in collaboration with Ceràmica Cumella and supported by the Consorci de Comerç, Artesania i Moda de Catalunya (CCAM).
The experience explores how robotics and artificial intelligence can expand traditional craftsmanship, creating new forms of collaboration between human gesture and robotic fabrication.
Visitors perform a ceramic glazing movement that is captured and translated into robotic motion. A robotic arm then reproduces that gesture on a ceramic surface, generating a unique piece. Through this process, the installation demonstrates how digital technologies can amplify — rather than replace — the knowledge embedded in artisanal practice.
As part of the programme, Daniel Ibáñez, Director of IAAC, and Alex Dubor, Director of the IAAC Robotics Lab, delivered a talk exploring how robotics, artificial intelligence and material intelligence are transforming the way objects, buildings and urban systems are designed and produced.
Their discussion addressed the evolving role of robotic fabrication in architecture, moving beyond industrial repetition toward processes capable of engaging with variation, material behaviour and craft traditions. These research directions form part of IAAC’s broader agenda, where architecture integrates technology, digital fabrication and ecological thinking.
IAAC’s presence at Mobile World Congress reflects the growing relationship between architecture and emerging technologies.
Through installations such as Digital Cloud and Crafting the Future, IAAC demonstrates how architectural research can engage directly with robotics, artificial intelligence and digital fabrication to explore new modes of production and material experimentation.
Within the ecosystem of Mobile World Congress, architecture becomes a way to materialise the technological systems shaping our cities — translating digital infrastructures into spatial and architectural experiences.
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