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Prometheus 

2026  ·  Visuals

The images reveal software glitches where black squares appear, as if to redact a technology advancing faster than its own cartographic representation. This architectural collage illustrates the mutation of a territory under the impetus of the New Albany Company, owned by billionaire Les Wexner (CEO of Victoria’s Secret). After buying up farmland to resell to tech giants, the company continues to speculate on a residential habitat that has become paradoxical: the suburban utopia here collides with the hum of servers. Between evictions for demolition and departures forced by industrial nuisances, the area is desertifying to make way for a new kind of architecture.

The appearance of this industrial complex is indeed unusual, consisting of aluminum tents covered in waterproof fabric. These are rapid-deployment structures designed to meet the skyrocketing demand for power required by Artificial Intelligence. The project thus examines both the deployment of these megastructures and the imaginaries they evoke, notably through the choice of their names, which are far from trivial.

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is the rebel Titan who stole sacred fire to gift it to humanity, snatching them from their animal finitude. For Meta, Prometheus is a marketing and infrastructural emblem: it is the name given to their first "titan" AI supercluster, a multi-gigawatt campus specifically designed for the training and deployment of large-scale AI models, as part of the superintelligence program announced by founder Mark Zuckerberg in July 2025.
Prometheus is currently under construction in New Albany, Ohio, where Meta has been established since 2017 within the New Albany Business Park. This 9,000 acres industrial zone already hosts several tech giants, including Amazon, Intel, and Google. This landscape, a hybrid of small residential neighborhoods and data centers, will, according to Zuckerberg, house the world’s largest data center once completed.

By naming his supercluster after the fire-thief, is Zuckerberg claiming the capture of a superintelligence capable of surpassing human creation?

However, we must not forget that in the Greek myth, the gift of fire comes with Pandora. Fashioned by Hephaestus by order of Zeus, she is the one who brings to men the jar containing all evils. Could the generative AI emanating from these superclusters be our Pandora? This seductive interface, this omniscient assistant, this "free gift" offered to humanity. Might it not instead be an algorithmic black box which, upon opening like Pandora’s box, releases the evils of truth erosion and the obsolescence of human skills?

The myth, however, remains a tragedy, and Silicon Valley’s architects would be wise not to ignore its downfall. While Prometheus frees mankind, he also suffers the punishment of Zeus. Chained to Mount Caucasus, the Titan’s liver is devoured by an eagle in an eternal cycle. Behind the hubris of Meta’s CEO, fancying himself a demiurge in the making, a question arises: is the sacred fire promised by Meta intended to enlighten us, or are we merely the dupes of an Olympian ruse?