Confidential Cloud Complex Data Centre

Overview

Opportunity

Solution

Impact

Team

A design-driven, community-responsive data centre complex that addresses evolving technologies in the industry.

Location

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Client

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Expertise

Critical Facilities

Opportunity

A prominent corner site called for a design that could demonstrate data centres can address context, functionality, and local communities.

Positioned on a highly visible corner of a wider cloud complex, this data centre needed to have a positive external representation. Experienced differently from every approach, passing drivers see it at speed from nearby highways, while cyclists and pedestrians encounter it at much closer range. These conditions created an opportunity to move beyond the anonymous industrial box and develop a building specifically shaped by function, visibility, and landscape setting. Its layered design reveals increasing depth and detail as you approach, creating a richer experience at both urban and human scale.

Why This Matters

01
Responding to Community and Context
Although highly technical in function, the building is experienced daily by nearby communities, commuters, cyclists, and employees, making its appearance and landscape response especially important.
02
Creating Wider Environmental Value
The project considers how data infrastructure can contribute beyond its immediate use, supporting biodiversity and future opportunities to make beneficial use of waste heat locally.
03
Rethinking the Typology
As data infrastructure grows in scale and visibility, the project explores how highly functional buildings can also contribute positively to place and experience.

FPO Quote

Solution

The team provided a solution that responded to the requirements of a municipality keen to create a blended industrial landscape that adapted to the local communities, and integrating data solutions with wider commercial uses.

The result is a distinctive building form that gives back to its landscape, both visually and ecologically. Research into data networks, digital nodes, and patterns of connection informed a three-layered façade screen made from overlapping geometric modules. At close range, the pattern reveals a finer grain; from the surrounding highways, it reads as a larger architectural gesture. This shift in scale allows the building to respond to both pedestrians and passing traffic. The modular system also supports fabrication and maintenance, while integrated lighting animates the façade after dark and reinforces its role as a marker at the campus gateway.

From brief to build: redefining the appearance of the data centre through a distinctive, buildable façade inspired by the building's digital purpose.

Extensive analysis identified the building as a prominent corner site, shaping a dynamic form designed to be experienced from multiple directions and at different speeds. Rather than accept the conventional data centre box, the team wrapped and sculpted the massing in response to these varied viewpoints. Attention then shifted to the façade, where research into data networks, algorithmic art, and AI imagery informed a scalable geometric language. Landscape, living walls, biodiversity measures, and rainwater harvesting further strengthened the project’s environmental performance and relationship with its surroundings.

Reading the Site

Context studies mapped highways, pedestrian routes, green edges to understand how the building would be experienced.

Impact

The project shows how critical infrastructure can move beyond anonymity, using architecture and landscape to create a distinctive and considered presence within the public realm.

Its responsive façade gives the building identity at both highway and pedestrian scale while establishing a stronger architectural precedent for the wider industrial area.

What Changed Because of This

01
Public Presence
A façade designed around speed, scale, and visibility turns a highly functional building into a recognisable architectural marker at the campus gateway.
02
Industrial Integration
A project-specific design language satisfies the requirement for differentiation while demonstrating how individual data centres can contribute to a coherent wider setting.
03
Landscape Integration
Living walls, meadow planting, habitat features, permeable surfaces, and rainwater harvesting help reduce the building’s visual impact while supporting biodiversity across the site.

We explored data as an architectural language, translating networks, movement, and connections into a distinctive façade that challenges expectations of what a data centre can be.

Team

Project Leadership

Madeleine Hilton

Madeleine is the Managing Director of Gensler’s Birmingham office. With over 20 years of experience in the city, she is a seasoned architect whose work spans the education, industrial and logistics, critical facilities, transportation, residential, and commercial sectors.

[FPO] Nick Bishop

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Joost Lansbergen

Joost Lansbergen is a Project Director in Gensler’s Berlin office and is focused on design and delivery of Mission Critical projects across Europe. He is a trusted advisor, known for delivering tailored solutions that seamlessly combine design excellence, operational performance, and sustainability.

FAQ

01

What is distinctive about the data centre’s design?

The building breaks away from the typical data centre box, with a sculpted massing and layered façade designed around how it is experienced from different viewpoints. A bespoke geometric screen translates the movement and connectivity of data into overlapping patterns that read differently at close range and from a distance.

02

How does the project respond to its landscape?

Living walls, meadow planting, habitat features, permeable surfaces, and rainwater harvesting help integrate the building with its surroundings and support biodiversity.

03

How large is the data centre?

The project provides approximately 9,500 square metres of data centre space on a 20,000-square-metre site.

04

How does the project rethink conventional data centre design?

Rather than concealing its function behind generic industrial cladding, the design uses the idea of data itself to create a recognisable architectural identity.

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Related Expertise

Critical Facilities

A design-driven, community-responsive data centre complex that addresses evolving technologies in the industry.

A prominent corner site called for a design that could demonstrate data centres can address context, functionality, and local communities.

Why This Matters

The team provided a solution that responded to the requirements of a municipality keen to create a blended industrial landscape that adapted to the local communities, and integrating data solutions with wider commercial uses.

From brief to build: redefining the appearance of the data centre through a distinctive, buildable façade inspired by the building's digital purpose.

The project shows how critical infrastructure can move beyond anonymity, using architecture and landscape to create a distinctive and considered presence within the public realm.

What Changed Because of This