In 2001 a space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick envisages an
enigmatic monolith as evidence of a higher intelligence having been present in
our solar system. He only got the date
and the size wrong.
Data centres are starting to look ominously like Kubrick’s
vision. They may not yet be autonomous;
indeed given that they are actually about connectivity, that idea is an
oxymoron. But in as much as they are a
building type which contributes disproportionately to our requirements for electrical
power, their design is very much about reducing to a bare minimum the
dependence on mechanical environmental controls.
And so it is with this one outside the city of Covilha, at
the foot of Portugal's highest mountain range.
