DataHub: Data Centers for Cities and People

Abstract

This thesis looks at how to design data centers for the urban context in a way that benefits cities and the people who live in them. COVID-19 has only reinforced the sentiment that our physical realm will require more and more room for the digital infrastructure that sustains it. Every day, the average person produces 15GB of data. By 2025, the globe will have produced 17.5 trillion GB. While invisible to us, all of this data needs physical infrastructure to store and analyze it multiple times.

Where do we store all of this data? How can we do it in a sustainable way? How can we reintegrate the physical store of data in a thoughtful and sustainable way? This thesis reimagines a new type of data center for our cities that is an integrated and sustainable home for the digital infrastructure that our society and economy demand.

In so doing, the methodology of this thesis examines the project from a number of lenses including: data analysis to find ideals sites and opportunities; design to integrate the industrial and functional nature of data centers with urban needs; energy to understand where mutual needs can be met between urban data centers and other uses, and real estate to understand the financial incentives.