Archinect - News

Will the AEC industry keep up with America’s demand for new data centers?

2023-06-29T12:11:00-04:00

Data centers will increasingly be built farther from some of the traditional locations and will move closer to the clients they serve, according to research by Gartner, an I.T. consultancy. But the search for land is not always easy. [...] And as major players in the data industry strive to become greener in the next decade, the pressure is on.

The crunch for new data infrastructure is straining local utility companies in areas such as Northern Virginia owing to a requirement for "inhaling massive amounts of energy," a reality that leads to concerns that local residents will be asked to foot the bill in the end.

Water use is also becoming an issue, despite smaller colocation centers being the more preferred building type. Still, the billions of dollars flowing into their construction are not expected to abate any time soon, according to a report last November from Dodge Data & Analytics, which predicted the boom to last at least another two full years.

"Data centers might not seem like an exciting place for an architectural project," Dutch academic Marina Otero said last year at the announcement of her Wheelwright Prize win. "However, the huge scale of the operations of the data industry and its pervasiveness an...

The proliferation of data centers is turning Virginia into ‘the Commonwealth of Amazon’

2023-02-23T16:30:00-05:00

Amazon in January signed a $35 billion contract to build new data centers across Virginia, a deal so sizable a detractor disappointed at the incentives being thrown at the tech giant said, “We might as well start calling it the Commonwealth of Amazon.”

The state’s “Data Center Alley,” Loudoun County, is still cutting $1- to $3 million-per-acre deals with tech companies that rely on hyperscale data centers designed to provide massive, scalable data storage and computing resources for cloud computing and big data processing. The currently inadequate power grid is not expected to be up to snuff until 2026. The problem is spreading beyond Old Dominion to places like Portland, Oregon, suburban Chicago, and other communities where tax incentives rule over local opposition and environmental concerns.

Back in December, the Dodge Construction network’s chief economist Richard Branch said to expect the boom to last at least another two years. The real scope of the epoch could be much longer. As reported by the Commercial Observer, experts from Cushman & Wakefield said they project the market to grow from $173 to $728 billion by 2027 for hyperscale construction alone.

Dodge Momentum Index grows for the third consecutive month in November, driven by data center planning and institutional projects

2022-12-07T14:45:00-05:00

The Dodge Momentum Index (DMI) for November showed a steady increase of 3.8% to 207.2, marking the third consecutive month of growth following September and October’s revised totals of 182.2 and 199.6, respectively.

The reported increases in planning activity were propelled by commercial and institutional projects, which were bolstered by a rise in data centers, hotels, offices, government administrative buildings, and religious facilities. The November score represents a 25% increase year-over-year versus the Index’s November 2021 reading, with the commercial component up 28% and institutional planning up another 21% in the same time period.

A total of 21 projects with a value of $100 million or more were recorded for the month. The biggest commercial projects included two $500 million segments for a Facebook data center in Virginia, along with the $400 million Sunset Industrial Park warehouse in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The two leading institutional projects were the $185 million H...

Don't expect Big Tech's economic crunch to slow the pace of data center construction, experts say

2022-11-29T09:00:00-05:00

High inflation, rising interest and plummeting stocks are taking a toll on Big Tech [...] Despite the amount of blood on tech firms’ payroll ledgers, though, these massive cuts are not expected to affect the blistering pace of data center construction, according to industry sources.

The expected pullback from larger hyperscale data centers is nonetheless on pace to be absorbed by concurrent increases in the proliferation of smaller and more quickly deliverable colocation centers, according to recent market data.

Dodge Data & Analytics chief economist Richard Branch says he expects that boom will continue for at least the next two years. Google and Meta continue to be big drivers as demand is simply outstripping cost concerns. Other companies are even floating the possibility of data center construction on the moon should technology and the proper legal bodies allow.

Dodge Momentum Index records dramatic increase in September, led by data centers and large East Coast commercial projects

2022-10-07T15:17:00-04:00

The latest Dodge Momentum Index (DMI) report indicates a sizable increase of 5.7% to a total of 183.2 for September, up from the revised 173.4 figure that was recorded in August.

The Dodge Construction Network notes that this total falls within 5% of the DMI’s all-time high and was propelled by an 11.7% gain in institutional construction and further increase in the commercial component, which rose by 2.9% bolstered primarily by a sharp rise in the number of data center projects inaugurated in every region. A year-to-year increase of 26% was also recorded over last September’s totals, with 25% and 28% increases recorded in the commercial and institutional components respectively when compared to last year.

Exactly 39 projects with values of $100 million or more were recorded, with a pair of $500 million commercial projects in Virginia and Upstate New York topping the list followed by a $311 million casino in Idaho and another $300 million laboratory project in the Boston suburbs.

G...

Marina Otero is announced as the 2022 Wheelwright Prize winner

2022-06-13T13:47:00-04:00

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has announced Design Academy Eindhoven program head Marina Otero as the winner of this year’s $100,000 Wheelwright Prize in support of her research proposal titled ‘Future Storage: Architectures to Host the Metaverse.’

Through the grant, Otero will look to explore the new architectural paradigms of data stores while considering the potential of digital infrastructure to combat some of society’s most pressing and immediate challenges. She has already begun fieldwork in France, the Netherlands and UK, and will further expand her research to include Singapore, Australia, Nigeria, the U.S., Iceland, Sweden, and Chile as a result of the prize's newly-gained backing.

"Data centers might not seem like an exciting place for an architectural project," the first-place winner explained. "However, the huge scale of the operations of the data industry and its pervasiveness and increasing importance in the contemporary world–coupled with its openness to...

Barcelona is developing a digital twin within a 19th-century chapel

2022-05-20T11:47:00-04:00

Barcelona has become the latest city to begin construction on a digital twin of itself. Currently in a test phase, the data-driven replica of the city is expected to be operational by 2027, at which point it will be used as an urban planning tool to shape the city’s future development.

The digital twin will be housed within the MareNostrum supercomputer, one of the world’s most powerful data processors, located within the city’s Torre Girona chapel. Originally constructed in the 19th century, the chapel was rebuilt in the 1940s following the Spanish Civil War, and now sits on the campus of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. The chapel has housed the supercomputer since 2005.

The MareNostrum supercomputer. Image courtesy of Barcelona Supercomputing Center

For city officials, the digital twin will offer urbanists, architects, and planners a means of testing urban theories and projects before implementation in order to understand their effects, without physically disrupting th...

India is taxing cryptocurrencies to finance its push for new infrastructure

2022-02-01T19:12:00-05:00

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has included hefty spending on infrastructure projects in its annual budget, looking to spur growth and improve its popularity just ahead of key state elections. The budget also includes a proposed 30% tax on income from cryptocurrencies.

India also introduced a new digital rupee (after previously attempting a ban on cryptocurrencies) and plans to declare data centers and large energy storage systems as infrastructure in an effort to increase access to institutional funding. Hopes are that the investment in building projects will create employment opportunities which will thus pour money back into the economy. Current forecasts have India’s GDP growing at an 8% rate for the fiscal year.

The country’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the package includes $2.68 billion in allocations for highway expansions and funding for 400 new trains that will be manufactured in the next three years. The money constitutes a major shift as about $4 billion less is being spent on healthcare delivery than was included in last year’s budget. Prime Minister Modi has said very publicly that he feels it is his responsibility to make infrastructure development a top priority for the world’s second-most populous country.

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Facebook to build giant data center in Illinois

2020-07-10T14:14:00-04:00

Facebook is due to commence construction on its 12th data center in the United States with a new $800 million, 907,000-square-foot facility located in DeKalb, Illinois. The data center will be powered by 100% renewable energy and will use 80% less water than the average data center, the company writes in a statement. Upon completion, the project will obtain LEED Gold certification.

Moreover, the new facility will provide an estimated 100 operational jobs and employ an estimated 1,200 construction workers who will be working onsite for "several years," according to the company. Mortenson Construction was selected as the general contractor for the job. An architect for the project has not been listed.

Facebook has also partnered with the City of DeKalb, Kishwaukee Water Reclamation District, and Krusinski Construction Company to help design, build, and support the infrastructure for the 500-acre site. The work includes nearly three miles of water lines, one and a half miles of sewer...

Microsoft’s undersea data center now has a webcam

2018-08-23T13:10:00-04:00

Microsoft has been experimenting with undersea data centers for years, and the current installation in the Orkney Islands will be deployed for around five years. There are 12 racks with 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes (27,600 terabytes) of storage [...] The data center is powered by a giant undersea cable that also connects it back to the internet, and the findings could mean the company will scale this project up to more powerful data centers in the future.

Microsoft has now installed a webcam by its undersea data center located off the shores of Scotland. The video stream is part of the company's efforts to observe environmental conditions of Project Natick, a research project aimed at determining the feasibility of subsea data centers powered by offshore renewable energy.

Check out the live video stream here.

The “infrastructural excess” of data centers and cloud-computing colonization

2018-05-22T14:20:00-04:00

With the cloud being increasingly lifestyled and infrastructured into a range of everyday social and economic practices and processes, data centres continue to grow in size. Far from a massive database in the sky, it is the planet’s surface and our everyday lives that are gradually being colonised by the cloud.

This piece by Alexander Taylor, a social anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, looks back on the evolution of data center infrastructure, which continues to grow larger as our everyday lives become increasingly influenced by cloud computing.

The ecological footprint of your Netflix binge

2015-12-16T23:07:00-05:00

The impact of data centers—really, of computation in general—isn’t something that really galvanizes the public, partly because that impact typically happens at a remove from everyday life. The average amount of power to charge a phone or a laptop is negligible, but the amount of power required to stream a video or use an app on either device invokes services from data centers distributed across the globe, each of which uses energy to perform various processes [...]

"Still, it seems weird that most people—most engineers building the platforms people use every day, even—lack the basic comprehension that different online activities have different energy impacts, or that an individual’s online activities have energy impact at all beyond a laptop’s battery life."

Alvar Aalto gets a close look from Google's Cultural Institute

2014-08-28T15:53:00-04:00

Google's satellite imaging allows us to virtually tour remote or inaccessible locales the world over, and with recently improved resolutions and initiatives from the Google Cultural Institute, our gaze can go farther and more intimately into places we may never physically visit. Google's interest in maintaining this visual resource has implications as far-reaching as its imagery, but it's also a boon for architecture education, where access to imagery and certain spaces can be highly exclusive, and retaining a global (and historical) perspective is exceedingly important.

To this end, Google's Cultural Institute has partnered with the Alvar Aalto Foundation in order to make the famous Finnish architect's spaces (and of course his famous stool no. 60) available online in 360-degree panoramas, detailing every surface. The partnership's collection focuses on eight sites, including Aalto's studio, Säynätsalo Town Hall, and the House Kantola, as well as an exhibition at the Aalto Museum in...

Mysterious Google barge destined for the scrap yard

2014-08-06T14:03:00-04:00

There’s no smooth sailing for at least one of Google’s mysterious barges. Parts of the $4 million boat, located in Portland, Maine, are being sold for scrap, a Google spokesperson has confirmed to Fortune. Google’s three barges sparked a media storm of inquiries when they first appeared in 2013, raising questions about their purpose. Were they floating data centers? A secret lab to design and launch Google’s next stunning project?

Previously:

Second Facebook Building In Luleå, Sweden, To Test New Rapid Deployment Data Center Concept

2014-03-11T14:21:00-04:00

The newly announced second building at Facebook’s data center in Luleå, Sweden, will be the first of the social network’s data centers to be built using its new rapid deployment data center concept, which leans on modular and lean construction principles, much like those demonstrated by Swedish furniture giant Ikea.

San Francisco's bay barge mystery: Floating data center or Google Glass store?

2013-10-29T15:04:00-04:00

The mystery surrounding a large structure built on a barge docked in San Francisco bay is deepening. Is it a floating Google data center? A floating Google Glass store? Or something else altogether?

Meanwhile, (not-so-secret) construction boom at Google's fellow bay area competitors:

UPDATE: Google's barge explanation: Bilge?

Sears to convert defunct department stores into data centers

2013-05-24T14:51:00-04:00

Sears Holdings, the 120-year old retailer (which now includes Kmart), plans to start converting its struggling and defunct department stores into data centers, Data Center Knowledge reported today. A new unit of the company, Ubiquity Critical Environments, will lead the charge. Thanks to Walmart, specialty shops, an economic downturn and—the sweet irony—online shopping, department stores are heading toward extinction, and Sears is feeling the pain particularly hard.

The Amazing Infrastructure That Powers IBM, Microsoft, And GE

2012-05-01T12:57:00-04:00

Stoll’s images capture vast and mind-meltingly valuable landscapes that are hidden in plain sight, housed in unassuming warehouses and suburban data centers all over the world.

London Data Center Geeks Will Live in Pods to Dodge Olympic Traffic

2012-04-13T19:01:00-04:00

Staffers at some London data centers won’t be burdened with long commutes when the 2012 Olympics roll into town this summer and jam up city streets. Instead, they’ll have futuristic sleeping pods to crash in so they can never leave work. In the past month, a London company called PodTime has sold 19 pods at £1,375 ($2,190) a pop to three collocation facilities, including a data center operated by Interxion, says Jon Gray, the founder of the 1-year-old company.