BIM-driven prototype turns data centers into a kit of parts

Considering their predominantly functional and technical nature, data centers are becoming as much a product as they are a building. As a data center “product,” there are opportunities for mass customization of assemblies that can lead to higher levels of efficiencies than those that can be attained by an outmoded stick-built/one-off approach to building design.

However, as data center “buildings”—which exist within a real site with a real context and real constraints—the need exists to think of the building as a system of assemblies that can be sensitively arranged to match the unique requirements of a particular location and program.

A promise that building information modeling (BIM) holds is to create a dynamic model of components which can evolve and improve over time.

To take advantage of this promise, Digital Realty commissioned SPARCH to design and model a prototypical, modular data center shell in BIM that was responsive to a range of data center infrastructure solutions that Digital Realty had developed.

As noted by our client, Steve Kundich, AIA, Vice President, Design & Construction with Digital Realty, “BIM was essential for our PBB+ Prototype development, allowing for rapid site master planning and building design. It eliminates most of the conceptual design and design development steps and allows the team to focus on localizing the design to the site and/or customer requirements.”

Rendering depicts a two-story, four-pod prototype assembly with an attached common building

Designed for assembly, this PBB+ (Powered Base Building+) prototype blends the best of prefabrication, modular, and site-built construction. This branded prototype is designed for supply chain optimization while allowing for a range of solutions based on particular site or program requirements.

In terms of supply chain optimization of the major architectural components, this prototype campaign will provide Digital Realty the ability to negotiate a considerable cost savings through long-term, bulk purchasing agreements while allowing for reduced lead times for key components. The major architectural components of the prototype would include roofing, exterior precast panels, sunshades and storefront, entry canopies, and even prefabricated stair modules. In addition, the building’s structural elements have been selected and designed to be simplified, repeatable, and readily available, avoiding long delays for specialty steel sizes and detailing.

From our client’s perspective, these will add up to major savings on the overall project budget and schedule, which equates to a quicker time to market. “The opportunities that BIM affords for off-site fabrication allow for reduced project schedule time and cost savings,” says Kundich. “We are now prefabricating major M&E portions of the project with our suppliers.”

Exploded components diagram of a one-story data hall pod module

Of course, every site is unique, with its own particular opportunities and requirements. The PBB+ prototype is modular in nature, allowing for both single-story and two-story solutions. An office or “common” building module is coupled with a varying number of data hall pod modules, each with the associated electrical and mechanical data center infrastructure that Digital has developed. This planning flexibility allows the prototype to conform to sites of various shapes and sizes throughout our client’s markets, while being flexible enough to accommodate their customers’ unique needs.

Since the PBB+ prototype is documented with BIM, all of Digital Realty’s AE design consultants can use this content to greatly accelerate the documentation of their site-specific projects, reducing the SD and DD phases of the project to just several weeks and allowing the teams to focus on localizing the design to site specific and customer requirements. Ultimately, the CD phases of the project will be reduced as well, as more construction details are developed and refined over time and added to the prototype model.

Portions of this prototype have already been incorporated into several Digital projects currently under way. The savings in cost and time in these case studies are just now being quantified. The goal is to provide a system that can be presented in conjunction with the data center infrastructure solutions that Digital has developed, as either a turn-key solution or as the basis of design for a build-to-suit data center project. Either way, the prototype approach should provide a more rapid and predictable project schedule, both in terms of design and construction, and yield a more cost effective and predictable project budget.

Individual components of one-story and two-story pod configurations

As for next steps, we can imagine setting up and working within a BIM infrastructure where the client's extended ecosystem of consultants/suppliers can continuously and incrementally improve this prototypical model, and do it in a way where the updates become a natural by-product of any given project's workflow.

Specifically, we can envision the development of a Revit Plugin that will, in concert with Revit’s WAN-based Server technology, continuously sync, in real-time, this evolving library of components between all of Digital Realty’s AEC consultant projects.

Similar to the product design analogy referenced above, this hybrid data center “product-building” can continue to evolve with each new “release,” with all of the information contained within this ever-evolving building model, which exists within the BIM infrastructure.

This approach, and the wide network of Digital’s design and vendor partners, should allow for a continual evolution of the design, with greater opportunity for innovation over a one-firm/one-client/one building approach.

We recognize that this represents a dramatic and potentially disruptive departure from the traditional design process. We as architects are ideally suited to participate in and even lead this departure and take advantage of the new opportunities, partnerships, and relationships it promises.

Goettsch Partners, Chicago, designed a new five-star, 214-room hotel for the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The design-build project, with Saudi Oger Ltd. as contractor and Rayadah Investment Co. as developer, has a three-story podium supporting a 17-story glass tower with a nine-story opening that allows light to penetrate the mass of the building.

| Aug 11, 2010

Three Schools checking into L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel site

Pasadena-based Gonzalez Goodale Architects is designing three new schools for Los Angeles Unified School District's Central Wilshire District. The $400 million campus, located on the site of the former Ambassador Hotel, will house a K-5 elementary school, a middle school, a high school, a shared recreation facility (including soccer field, 25-meter swimming pool, two gymnasiums), and a new publ...

| Aug 11, 2010

New Jersey's high-tech landscaping facility

Designed to enhance the use of science and technology in Bergen County Special Services' landscaping programs, the new single-story facility at the technical school's Paramus campus will have 7,950 sf of classroom space, a 1,000-sf greenhouse (able to replicate different environments, such as rainforest, desert, forest, and tundra), and 5,000 sf of outside landscaping and gardening space.

| Aug 11, 2010

U.S. firm designing massive Taiwan project

MulvannyG2 Architecture is designing one of Taipei, Taiwan's largest urban redevelopment projects. The Bellevue, Wash., firm is working with developer The Global Team Group to create Aquapearl, a mixed-use complex that's part of the Taipei government's "Good Looking Taipei 2010" initiative to spur redevelopment of the city's Songjian District.

| Aug 11, 2010

Florida mixed-use complex includes retail, residential

The $325 million Atlantic Plaza II lifestyle center will be built on 8.5 acres in Delray Beach, Fla. Designed by Vander Ploeg & Associates, Boca Raton, the complex will include six buildings ranging from three to five stories and have 182,000 sf of restaurant and retail space. An additional 106,000 sf of Class A office space and a residential component including 197 apartments, townhouses, ...

| Aug 11, 2010

Restoration gives new life to New Formalism icon

The $30 million upgrade, restoration, and expansion of the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles was completed by the team of Rios Clementi Hale Studios (architect), Harley Ellis Devereaux (executive architect/MEP), KPFF (structural engineer), and Taisei Construction (GC). Work on the Welton Becket-designed 1967 complex included an overhaul of the auditorium, lighting, and acoustics.

| Aug 11, 2010

Best AEC Firms to Work For

2006 FreemanWhite Hnedak Bobo Group McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. Shawmut Design and Construction Walter P Moore 2007 Anshen+Allen Arup Bovis Lend Lease Cannon Design Jones Lang LaSalle Perkins+Will SmithGroup SSOE, Inc. Timothy Haahs & Associates, Inc. 2008 Gilbane Building Co. HDR KJWW Engineering Consultants Lord, Aeck & Sargent Mark G.

| Aug 11, 2010

High-Performance Workplaces

Building Teams around the world are finding that the workplace is changing radically, leading owners and tenants to reinvent corporate office buildings to compete more effectively on a global scale. The good news is that this means more renovation and reconstruction work at a time when new construction has stalled to a dribble.

| Aug 11, 2010

Great Solutions: Business Management

22. Commercial Properties Repositioned for University USE Tocci Building Companies is finding success in repositioning commercial properties for university use, and it expects the trend to continue. The firm's Capital Cove project in Providence, R.I., for instance, was originally designed by Elkus Manfredi (with design continued by HDS Architects) to be a mixed-use complex with private, market-...

| Aug 11, 2010

Nurturing the Community

The best seat in the house at the new Seahawks Stadium in Seattle isn't on the 50-yard line. It's in the southeast corner, at the very top of the upper bowl. "From there you have a corner-to-corner view of the field and an inspiring grasp of the surrounding city," says Kelly Kerns, project leader with architect/engineer Ellerbe Becket, Kansas City, Mo.

Currently Reading

BIM-driven prototype turns data centers into a kit of parts

Tags

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

Most Popular Content

Magazine Subscription

Get our Newsletters

Follow BD+C: