Neighbourhood DCs: Designing for Fit, Function and Public Benefit08 December 2025
Featuring the insight of Neil McCormick, Associate Director
Most people still picture a data centre the way they would have ten or fifteen years ago:
a big grey box full of pipes, wires and cooling equipment.
“That was always the perception. The goal was: what is the easiest, quickest way to cool the servers inside this big box?” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director
That thinking doesn’t really hold anymore.
Data centres aren’t hiding in industrial estates these days. They’re turning up on agricultural land, on the edge of towns, beside homes, schools and offices. People see them on their commute. They look out their kitchen window and there it is.
And once a community can see a data centre every day, it can’t just behave like a sealed-off engineering container.
Looking at a data centre like an organism
One idea Neil kept coming back to is that a data centre behaves more like an organism than a container.
“Ultimately what we are all trying to achieve is somewhere we can have servers and maintain them, and keep them at a particular temperature.” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director
From there, everything branches out:
- Power in
- Air through the building
- Structure taking the load
- People moving safely for maintenance
- Equipment being replaced without tearing walls open
- Security layers tightening towards the data hall
- Fire rules shifting from Ireland to Frankfurt to Oslo
Seeing the building as a whole system makes it easier to design something that works - not just on paper, but in day-to-day use.
Designing in agricultural settings calls for softer edges
“When you’re out in an agricultural setting, you don’t think of rigid blocks. You think of softer edges.” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director
Atypical sites require an atypical approach.
On uneven or sloped rural land, simply dropping in a standard campus layout creates a run of perfect rectangles that sits awkwardly against the landscape. Instead, the design starts with the contours - not the grid.
“Plots still need to be efficient and as flat as possible, but they don’t have to line up in a perfect grid. By shifting each building slightly to follow the land, the whole campus reads differently.” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director
From a distance, the buildings sit more naturally. They don’t present as an industrial regiment of identical forms. And at building level, techniques like offset secondary façades, split panels and perforated screens help soften the mass of the structures.
The technical function doesn’t change, but the impact on the environment does.
People, neighbours and planning: the parts no one sees on the drawings
“We assume everyone understands the technical stuff. But they don’t.” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director
Most people looking at a planning drawing don’t speak M&E, fire strategy or security. They see the size, the shape, and whether it feels like something that belongs beside their home or office.
“For us, the narrative is a big part of it. If people understand why a building is shaped a certain way, or why a circulation route has to be where it is, they’re far more likely to get on board.” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director
Clarity matters.
The design team relies on:
- Diagrams that make the logic obvious
- Drawings that show relationships clearly
- Visualisations that reflect the actual finished building
- Documents that a community liaison team can use without needing an engineering degree
“People can accept almost anything as long as they understand it. But they can only understand it if we tell the story clearly.” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director
That clarity becomes critical in edge-of-city sites or rural areas where communities live close by. Sometimes it’s about landscape buffers and planting. Sometimes it’s carving out small areas the community will actually use. Sometimes it’s simply explaining scale, movement or screening in a way that makes sense to non-technical people.
Creativity doesn’t disappear just because the building has servers in it
“I became an architect because I’m interested in space and how people interact with space. Any space - even an external one - changes how people feel.” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director
That hasn’t changed just because the project involves servers and backup generators.
“When we start designing a masterplan or a data centre, we don’t lose sight of the reasons we got into this profession. We still want to create spaces people interact with - and that make people feel good.” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director
This isn’t about turning a data centre into a sculpture.
It’s about design decisions that make the building work better for the people who use it and live beside it:
- Safer, clearer maintenance routes
- Entrances that feel intuitive
- A campus that doesn’t read like a wall of metal
- Outdoor areas that sit comfortably in the local setting
- Layouts that don’t overwhelm neighbouring homes or farmland
Creativity is not decorative here - it’s practical.
Designing for clients you know - and clients you haven’t met yet
There are broadly three client structures in the data centre world, and each shapes the design differently.
“When we’ve worked with a hyperscaler before, we have fluency in how they like to work.” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director
That fluency means the team already understands the basis-of-design documents, expectations and cultural nuances that shape a large project. The path from concept to tender is clearer.
Developers building for a known hyperscaler benefit from the same fluency. The architect already knows how that end-user prefers their building to operate.
Colocation providers are different.
“When the end-user isn’t known yet, you’re designing for a client you haven’t met. You’re basically designing for every eventuality.” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director
That affects structure, circulation, security, rack sizes, loading areas, office provisions - practically everything.
It requires judgement, foresight and enough experience to avoid design decisions that box the project into a corner later.
Three questions worth asking at the start of any new data centre project
1. Who is actually holding the whole organism in view?
Someone has to connect power, structure, cooling, circulation, fire, security and landscape into one coherent plan.
2. How will this design be explained to people who aren’t engineers?
Clear diagrams, clear visuals and a narrative that makes sense to planners and neighbours.
3. Are we designing for the first tenant - or the life of the asset?
Especially in colocation models, the first user is rarely the last.
Data centres will always be technical, but the world around them has changed.
Once people live beside them, walk past them and look at them every day, the design has to work on more than one level.
And that’s the part of the process that is becoming more important than ever.
“We don’t lose sight of the reason we became architects. Even with data centres, we still want to create spaces people interact with - and spaces that make people feel good.” - Neil McCormick, Associate Director