It has only been a few weeks since we visited the site of Bresler's Parliament Street Data Centre just north of the Distillery District, and in that short time, cladding installation has nearly been completed on the building's west façade and has since begun on the south side. Designed by WZMH Architects, the five-storey, 22,000 square-metre (236,000 square-foot) data centre is unique among nearby projects for its mostly windowless exterior, a result of this building being built to house many machines, but not many people. Exceptions to the windowlessness are the building's ground floor and a sizeable glazed cube at the southwest corner. 

Parliament Street Data Centre, image by Jack Landau

While architects normally rely on the windows of their creations to animate the building's environs, WZMH cannot rely on that alone here, and is handling what would otherwise be blank walls with two variations of a dynamically contrasting terra cotta and black scheme, designed to evoke the look of the punch cards that were used to store and transfer data in the early days of computing.

Parliament Street Data Centre, image by Jack Landau

The west façade of the data centre has an undercoat of black metal cladding, with vertical fins to which are fixed porcelain slats, creating a shadow box effect and achieving the desired "punch card" effect.

Cladding on the west side of the Parliament Street Data Centre, image by Jack Landau

The cladding now going up on the south side of the data centre is a flatter variation, reversing the predominant and accent colours.

Cladding on the south side of the Parliament Street Data Centre, image by Jack Landau

Cladding on the south side of the Parliament Street Data Centre, image by Jack Landau

When the new facility is complete, over half of its floor area will be occupied by cabinets, or 'white space', configurable as required for the data servers of its tenants. One entire floor will be dedicated to building power and ventilation systems, while offices will occupy the building's ground floor frontages; these are the spots that will get windows to the outside world. The Parliament Street Data Centre will serve as the TR2 IBX Data Centre for lead tenant Equinix, who will be using approximately 35% of the building's cabinets.

The south and east sides of the Parliament Street Data Centre, image by Jack Landau

For more information about the Parliament Street Data Centre, check out our dataBase file for the building, linked below, or choose the associated Forum thread link to get in on the conversation. You can also leave a comment in the space provided at the bottom of this page.

Related Companies:  Trillium Architectural Products, WZMH Architects