Digital Doubtinside the circle
Rethink
Data center of the sea
2020 By Lauren Kirk, T. Craig Sinclair
As digital technologies expand, they require more infrastructure and energy to support them. Data centres full of servers to process data not only take up large tracts of land but require huge amounts of energy for processing and cooling, ultimately increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Artist and architect T. Craig Sinclair asks: why are data centres designed for human comfort and not for the machines they house? Utilising the ocean as a habitat with natural cooling properties, he designs strings of mid-ocean data centres that also generate kinetic energy from marine currents, creating a kind of ‘windmill of the sea’.