April Global Design Series

April 8, 2026
6:00PM – 7:00PM
AIA Chapter House
1 HSW Pending 

Data Centers and AI Infrastructure Boom: Conscientious Development

About the Event

Behind exciting new AI architectural visualization tools lie a quieter but important discussion for the architecture industry: the infrastructure needed to power them. Please join us on April 8th for a presentation and subsequent small group discussion about data centers built to support our AI usage, and their impact on the built environment and local communities.

The discussion will be prefaced with a presentation by Erika Kessler putting New Albany, Ohio under a spotlight, a small town technological hotspot boasting big names such as Meta, Google, and Amazon. Using this case study, we will explore how rapid technological developments can reshape a sense of place. Together we will consider how Santa Barbara can proactively establish a strategy to embrace technological advancements in alignment with our community values and explore what our role is as designers and stewards of our community to guide these changes.