wehaveallgotknives:

“The ‘Cloud’ is a convenient metaphor for making the heavy and industrial seem light and ineffable. One loses sight of so much energy and labour and transformation to space that is an aspect of living in a networked world…. The power use of this building (Equinix data storage centre, Amsterdam) is similar to that of an average Dutch city”

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PODCAST: DATA SPACE: THE ARCHITECTURE AND IMPACT OF DATA CENTRES (2018)

This interesting and well-researched podcast from Failed Architecture looks in detail and the architectural manifestations of our data-heavy contemporary lifestyle. It explores Benthem Crouwel’s minimalist Equinix Data Center, and touches on the potential for the waste heat of data centres to be used to warm tens of thousands of households. In particular it highlights the illusion created by the quick and easy interface we have with our devices when calling up videos, images, or other data. What can seem like a clean, instantaneous, and almost ethereal process actually has a huge energy footprint in the ‘real world’.

(via architectureandfilmblog)