Finalist: Hayden Grindell
Date with Data by Hayden Grindell, Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Architecture and Design.
This project explores the emerging architectural typology of digital data infrastructure, those places known, more commonly, as data centres. Data centres are the core physical infrastructure of digital information networks and are typically isolated from population centres due to functional constraints and potential tension with urban contexts. This design concept argues that the integration of digital data infrastructure within the city can be beneficial, and the design research addresses the context in which the physical infrastructure of global information networks can be reconfigured to contribute spatially and technologically to urban Wellington.
Citation
An unglamorous and ordinarily unseen part of our infrastructure – data storage – takes centre stage in this project. Several solutions are investigated, one of them a self-contained tower of austere beauty. In another, complex, sectional relationships are explored to house disparate uses with deft integration of the ground plan.
