The AI boom has an unexpected winner: Architects
Gabe Clark, data centers sector leader for Corgan, says the firm has been designing data centers since 1979 and anticipates year-over-year growth for at least the next five years. “We started executing one megawatt builds. We’re now designing now one gigawatt campuses,” he says. “There’s truly exponential growth in the marketplace, both in advancement of what data center design is and clearly in the need and the demand. And we don’t see that slowing down anytime soon.”
Clark says that the AI boom is leading data center developers to integrate new approaches for cooling, and that additional mechanical equipment means data center facilities are requiring more space than in the recent past. Clark says data centers built primarily to support cloud services just a few years ago could often fit all of this attendant mechanical equipment on their roofs. Now, with AI in the mix, data centers have to have additional square footage outside the building. “All of the mechanical and electrical infrastructure to support that same footprint of data module or data hall has now, in some cases, doubled,” Clark says.
