Abstract:
We are now well into the 21st century and technology continues to evolve at an alarming rate with no signs of decline. Our cell phones, an invention only created in the late 1990s, now have the power to replace our computers, cameras, and televisions. Architecture, however, has remained stagnant and unchanging , causing a massive disconnection between our architectural world and our technological. Much of this can be attested to data’s failed manifestation in our physical world. The Data Centre much would argue as the architectural representation of our technological world, however, currently, they are an undesigned, unaesthetic and unknown piece of infrastructure that is poorly represented in our physical world. With data rapidly becoming key in our everyday lives through the form of cloud-based services and social networking, it is sad to think that these current fortresses located in the middle of nowhere are the core infrastructure that represents our progress into the digital age. This thesis will explore the possibility of the data centres co-existence with society; it will consider the possibility of a data centre in combination with a variety of different programmatic functions located in central Auckland. This will explore the culmination of the ultra-digital and ultra-physical within one infrastructure in which society can freely experience and hopefully bring the architectural world closer with the technological.
