Forming a response to the age of AI and its emerging spatial requirements, this project seeks to bridge the gap between society and increasing knowledge-based frameworks in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland. By utilising remains of the city’s neglected infrastructure to foster new educational and economic opportunities, the resultant architecture culminates in a new ‘reactive’ urban typology, utilising spatialised forms of energy and heat exchange to promote collective identity through means of data storage.
“Technicity”, a neologism coined by Gilbert Simondon, references the relationship between ecology, society and technology, and the extent to which technologies mediate, supplement and augment societal exchange. This project aims to harness anthropological relationships within the realm of changing technological advancements, addressing wider emerging issues around the spatiality of data centres and their growing pressure on global energy sources. As such, the work forms a new typology allowing data centres and their increasingly astronomical power requirements to provide spatial responses to contextual needs. This methodology is applicable to broader issues faced by shrinking cities, addressing the intricate challenges of power, technology, space-ownership, and the global energy crisis.
The wider urban proposition aims to unite two of Derry/Londonderry’s most underutilised networks; Project Kelvin and the river Foyle, culminating in a programme that combines energy production with data storage, research facilities, and a new faculty of Bioinformatics within Ulster University. Furthermore, the scheme utilises heat produced through data storage to promote several elements of programme, including clinical research, university facilities, access to blue space and the cultivation of Lough Foyle’s historic oyster beds.
