Grounding the Virtual: Humanizing the Digital World

Technology informs the modern world and almost everything we touch is reliant on our connection to the internet and how quickly data can be shared. To facilitate this exchange, data centers are expanding across the country.

In addition to housing IT infrastructure to build, run, and deliver applications and services, these facilities physically store this virtualized IT infrastructure for shared use of multiple companies and customers. In structures in which MEP and IT infrastructure take precedence, architectural design can sometimes be overlooked. But KSS views this as an opportunity to express design around data and explore the best practices to sustain our communities and humanity.

As we speed toward the future at an increasingly rapid pace, where the digitized world can sometimes seem more real than the physical, it is more important than ever to ground ourselves in our communities. As designers, we have the unique opportunity to create built environments that not only elevate the human experience, but also the human capacity to connect with one another and with the natural, social, and economic structures that surround them. This can be achieved through material selection — and in the case of data centers, mass timber can be a great solution. It supports multiple project objectives: expedited construction schedules, enhanced end-user experiences, and fulfillment of many sustainability ambitions clients often have by reducing total lifecycle carbon footprint of a data center.

Responding to our innate human tendency to seek out connections to nature, the use of wood has been proven to increase user wellness by reconnecting individuals in the built environment with nature, which can reduce absenteeism and stress. Connecting those working in a digital world back to the natural world is a key design element to Penn Engineering’s Amy Gutmann Hall, New Data & AI Building.

“Amy Gutmann Hall is bridging time, distance, and space, and is enabling students to expand the limits of their imaginations. There is a really interesting tension between how the data science and AI research conducted in the building fuels the creation of our digital world, and the design aspirations of the building to reconnect people to each other and the natural world, through collaborative research spaces and natural materials. Mass timber is a construction technology that creates a warm, tactile environment that connects people to nature, and supports climate action goals by reducing the total life cycle carbon footprint of the building,” explains Mayva Donnon, Partner at KSS.

The need for data centers is growing, as they continue to fuel AI growth, increasing the need for ever faster processing speed, but the general public has a negative connotation of data centers, as they require a lot of energy and natural resources to run. For complex issues, such as balancing the high-energy demands of a data center with client sustainability goals, KSS elevates the practical to the poetic, providing our clients with spaces that are functional, efficient, and cost-effective, while also innovative and beautiful. We aim to create data centers that are beautiful from the outside through expression of material and promote wellness for those who work inside the building.

As our online footprint expands, our need for connection to a place and to community remains. For data centers to evolve beyond being “refrigerators for servers,” they must create an environment that resonate within a community. Reach out to see how KSS can help ground your data center.