VANGUARD DESIGN GROUP
Detroit’s skyline as seen from Windsor, Ontario showing
Data Center Detroit’s physical presence.
Data Center Detroit seen from the roof of the
Guardian Building in downtown Detroit.
Data Center Detroit seen from the adjacent
Campus Martius in the heart of the downtown core.
Study showing the distribution of major data centers across the United States
and focusing on their typical relationship to the downtown core.
Overview of the Data Transit Detroit network.
Streetscape study locating potential secondary data
center sites along and near Woodward Avenue.
Diagrammatic studies showing programmatic intent,
major tower circulation, and general building massing.
Diagrammatic studies showing the effect on Detroit’s skyline, the conceptual thinking
behind the façade design, a unit resource exchange concept, and a tower with study.
Sun study showing the towers shadowing effects
on the immediate area during different times of year.
Sub-Floor 1
Transit Center | Data Source
Ground Floor
Lobby | The Face of Data
Floor 3
Data Core | Data Access
Floor 5
Commercial | Working Data
Floor 8
Courtyard | Warmth of Data
Floor 12
Office | Working Data
Floor 24
Residential | Stored Data
Floor 39
Hotel | Transient Data
Floor 50
Penthouse | Stored Data
Floor 55
Observation Deck | The Cloud
Section showing the
programmatic adjacencies
Clear acrylic site model
Clear acrylic site model
Clear acrylic site model
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Data Center Detroit
Project Status – Concept
Scope – Research | Schematic Design | Space Planning | 3d Visualization
Data Center Detroit began as a study regarding the impact of data centers on our built environment and how to better integrate this building typology within the urban fabric. The project research includes an earlier study on how data and mass transit could be coupled to provide a symbiotic marriage between the transportation of information and people. Both studies centered on the city of Detroit as a location to test this concept and the city provided a blank slate and amazing opportunity to utilize the city's many vacant properties as project assets. The culmination of the project was a mixed use data tower that would become the largest data center in the world and become a physical representation of the scale of our digital world. The tower would begin to utilize the typical negative aspects of data centers, notably heat production, and the energy costs associated with them and view them as a potential asset. This tower would be located in the heart of the city’s downtown core and become the largest piece of its skyline. The tower was designed to include mass transit connections, retail spaces, offices, residential lofts and hotel spaces. A full book documenting the entire research and design process of both Data Center Detroit and Data Transit Detroit is available by request.
