01/2023
A data centre in an urban context
Can a data centre in an urban area be more than just the materialisation of our infrastructure? Can this single node, an invisible structure of communication, endow the given place with specificity, interact with its surroundings and architecturally emphasise its systemic significance as an element of a communicative system on site?
Emanuel Spurny
Diploma in Architecture
E253-1 – Gebäudelehre und Entwerfen
Supervisor: Christian Kühn, Harald Trapp
Perspective: glass-house
The data centre is an important component of the digital infrastructure. There the data is stored, processed or made available. Such centres are connected to the Internet and the data they hold can be called up from anywhere on the planet. The electronic services of a data centre work fully automatically. Human workers, such as technicians and security specialists, have been reduced to a minimum. The user of the digital services is constantly connected to a data centre via various end devices, such as computers, mobile phones or smartwatches.
This technology characterises culture, economics and the social life of today’s society. In the air, underground or under water the structure of the communication network remains invisible. Even when a data centre is visible, when the infrastructure takes physical form, the system itself cannot be seen. It may be an ordinary industrial building on the outskirts of a city or an office block in the central business district. They are silent and work unobtrusively.
As user devices get smaller and the amount of accessed data grows, computing and storage power is concentrated in more and larger data centres. In large European cities, such monofunctional buildings accumulate on the outskirts of large cities. Yet, as critical infrastructure, they are still excluded from the architectural discourse.
This diploma thesis analyses the current situation in Vienna in terms of architecture and urban development and offers a proposal for a new data centre.
The data centre is an important component of the digital infrastructure. There the data is stored, processed or made available. Such centres are connected to the Internet and the data they hold can be called up from anywhere on the planet. The electronic services of a data centre work fully automatically. Human workers, such as technicians and security specialists, have been reduced to a minimum. The user of the digital services is constantly connected to a data centre via various end devices, such as computers, mobile phones or smartwatches.
This technology characterises culture, economics and the social life of today’s society. In the air, underground or under water the structure of the communication network remains invisible. Even when a data centre is visible, when the infrastructure takes physical form, the system itself cannot be seen. It may be an ordinary industrial building on the outskirts of a city or an office block in the central business district. They are silent and work unobtrusively.
As user devices get smaller and the amount of accessed data grows, computing and storage power is concentrated in more and larger data centres. In large European cities, such monofunctional buildings accumulate on the outskirts of large cities. Yet, as critical infrastructure, they are still excluded from the architectural discourse.
This diploma thesis analyses the current situation in Vienna in terms of architecture and urban development and offers a proposal for a new data centre.
Diploma in Architecture
E253-1 – Gebäudelehre und Entwerfen
Supervisor: Christian Kühn, Harald Trapp
