Data Center as the Contemporary Hearth
Adaptive Reuse, Architecture History & Theory
2022 Spring
Professor Stefano Corbo
Providence, RI
Our perception of digital activities is often immaterial - the fire consumed is unnoticed when we experience it through the pristine screens and containers, or the omnipresent internet. Yet, they manifest in data centers that are devouring and accelerating energy use. Study on these buildings shows that they are highly secured and invisible from sight - the opaqueness of surveillance capitalism and the lack of public understanding. The extractive regime in the design of these buildings represents the early anthropocentric understanding of “fire” being perpetual and inaugural.
The research part examines the trajectory of human energy development as an integral part of architecture, in order to investigate the underlying infrastructure supporting contemporary datalisation.
(01) concept collage
(02) environment technology history research
In the design, could architecture create a viable narrative that critiques and recognizes the environmental impact of digital technology? Could the data center tranform into a hearth that act again as a magnet for social connection?
(03) exisiting site
(04) proposed programs
Adding programs that promote sharing our resources, imagining alternatives, freedom to play, and democratic knowledge acquisition.
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Library + Learning celebrates sharing, de-commodification, and democratisation of goods and ideas in a welcoming heart of a community.
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The Playground + Urban Forum initiates a deeper game connecting to the city while as a site of joyful and thoughtful experimentation.
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Public Baths holds a space for intimacy, relaxation, encourages free conversations and collective activities; heat waste could be reused
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Performance spaces foster environments to imagine alternative
- Exhibited Data Server Rooms invite the public to visit, open up discussion and reflect on the contemporary phenomenons
Design of form
- (a) 5 voids cut through the north-south wing of the building
- (b) 5 "chimneys" are inserted in the voids - hollow extrusions hold by the exisiting steel frame structures
- (c) The offset space acts as staircase core or skylights, or floor is extended to get more circulation space on the plan.
- (d) 2 "chimneys" functions as data server rooms with elevator access on the first floor; Corresponding windows are designed to exhibit what is going on inside
(06) exploded axon
(07) oblique
(08) floor plans
Rich variations of social interactions are designed in
the combination of a horizontal and of a series of vertical permeable spaces.
Some space has higher degree of enclosure with deep, narrow skylights; Other has an open balcony type of relationship where people can see each other.
(09) section longitude
(10) section perspective
(11) section perspective
(13) A long narrow corridor leads into the bath. Visitors can see the data servers working from the server room "chimneys".
(14) The reading room with only the skylight creates a silent, enclosed ambience.
(15) The urban forum on the ground floor initiates a joyful and thoughtful continuation of the city landscape. Exhibition and events that are open to all could be hold here.