The Netherlands was the first European country to connect to the Internet: their first data center appeared in the Science Park of Amsterdam - like AM4, only almost twenty years earlier, in 1988. Today, the park is responsible for 38% of national traffic, and the entire zone Amsterdam is one of the most important information hubs in Europe - along with London and Frankfurt am Main.
The first data centers were small and modest in appearance, located in industrial zones, and few cared about their appearance. However, with the development of information technology, the demand for them is growing exponentially, in the Netherlands it is an important sector of the economy, and they are already more visible in the urban environment, which makes their design a serious matter. One of the famous examples is
An Olympic data center in Beijing, which has since changed its function.
In 2012, according to the Benthem Crouwel project, a more modest Equinix data center - AM3 was opened in the Science Park, and now AM4 has appeared next to it: with an area of 24,000 m2 and a height of 72 m, it contains 12 floors with servers. Due to its dimensions, it is clearly visible from afar, for example, from the A10 ring road. Therefore, he received an elegant facade made of aluminum profiles - vertical, in contrast to the horizontal in the low-rise AM3. The profiles are triangular in cross-section, one of their sides is covered with silver, the other - with black paint, at the top they taper to make the volume of the building seem slimmer. The authors compare their construction to a large hard drive.
Despite the elegant exterior, the data center does not "invite" to enter, and this was also the intention of the architects: after all, it is a "secure" facility. However, instead of the usual fence, they made a moat with water as a more "friendly" variant of the fence, and the initial check of employees and visitors takes place in the spacious and bright lobby. A red bridge leads to the main, "safe" area: fingerprints are already being scanned here.
Data centers are known for generating a lot of heat - in the case of AM4, it goes to heat other objects in the Science Park; the building has a storage system.
Architects assume that in the future such spacious data centers as AM4 may not be needed: demand for them is growing, but IT equipment is decreasing in size. Therefore, the blind facade AM4 can be completely or partially replaced with any other and its areas can be used as laboratories, offices or even apartments.
