Rethinking Zurich's Data Centres: What Is Truly Civic Infrastructure?Lena Good, Aqil Durrani, Gabriele Zanni, and Omar El Sayed
OIZ (Organisation und Informatik) is located right in the heart of Zurich, which is unusual for a data centre.
To the north, it is surrounded by the Utogrund stadium and a small-scale housing neighbourhood. The grey metal façade covering the exterior gives the former Siemens industrial site a uniform appearance. While no telephone components are assembled here today, the site stores data from various city of Zurich branches and is home to banks such as Julius Bär, Vontobel, and the Swiss National Bank. Despite its large footprint, the building often goes unnoticed, as does the inside. In this work, we will examine the various spatial and technological layers of a data centre to reveal the processes and materials behind data storage.
We find that the OIZ remains indifferent to global trends in scale, demand, and resource use. Being a civic infrastructure, we raise the question whether the OIZ should not prioritise the needs of the local communities.
Our design brief challenges the current data centre typology, proposing a true civic data centre that will become a catalyst for how we use and perceive data in the future.