Data Center Infrastructure

Structural, technical service and phased-expansion capability from completed laboratory and industrial facilities, applied to the requirements of a data center building.

Data center construction is expanding across the Nordic region, driven by demand for computing capacity. The building requirements are heavy technical loads, integrated mechanical and electrical services, and access-controlled zoning. These are engineering problems the office has solved before, in laboratory and industrial technical facilities rather than in a data center itself.

Since 1964, the practice has designed technical buildings where equipment sets the requirements ahead of occupancy. That discipline is offered here as the closest documented match to a data center’s structural and service design.

What we deliver

Structural and technical building design for facilities where equipment, not occupancy, sets the requirements. SINTEF Torgard is an engine and structural laboratory completed for SINTEF and NTNU in 2025. Mechanical and electrical services are extensively integrated with the building shell, and the layout was designed for expansion from the outset.

Why it matters

A facility built around equipment is designed from the load in, not the room out. SIVA Finnfjord is an 8 000 square metre technical building at the Finnfjord smelter. It was extended between 2021 and 2025, while the original facility stayed in operation. That sequencing, construction around an active site, applies directly to a data center built out in stages.

Technical integration

SINTEF Multiphase in Trondheim, completed in 2009, is a laboratory built around the specialised piping and instrumentation needed to study multiphase pipe transport. Routing complex technical systems through a building shell without constraining the equipment is the same discipline a data center’s power, cooling and network infrastructure requires.