EP43: Sustainable data center architecture – part I

Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and researcher who in 2022 received Harvard’s Wheelwright Prize for a project on the future of data storage. She aims to publish the first open-source manual for global data center architecture design, featuring examples of ecological, sustainable, and egalitarian data storage models used in data centers across the world. Marina Otero Verzier’s work is especially urgent at a time when digital-data production is outpacing the scalability of today’s storage solutions, and AI usage is on the rise.

In this episode, Marina Otero Verzier and Mattias Fridström discuss:

• Trends driving the need for more sustainable data centers
• Her awarded project on the future of data storage, Future Storage: Architectures to Host the Metaverse
• The benefits of bringing architectural skills to the colocations industry
• Insights from the data centers that Marina has visited across the world 
• Factors besides connectivity that matter when choosing a data center location, such as energy consumption, tax benefits, climate, access to water and land
• Data center locations that Marina plans to visit next for her research