Data center: toward a flexible, urban, and reality‑anchored architecture

A flexible architecture to absorb change

The data center sector is evolving rapidly. The demand for power, storage, and computing changes from year to year, sometimes from one quarter to the next. Rather than trying to predict precisely what tomorrow’s technologies will be, we take a different approach: designing buildings capable of evolving at the pace of a constantly changing field.

This means imagining from the outset modular, adaptable, and expandable spaces.
Buildings that do not become fixed but anticipate their own transformation: possible extensions, internal reconfigurations, increased density, new uses, new cooling or computing technologies.

This flexibility ensures the building’s longevity, its economic sustainability, and its ability to absorb future innovations without disruption.

Limiting environmental impact from the design stage

Speaking about data centers inevitably means speaking about energy. Their performance is immense, but their consumption obliges us to design models that are more efficient, smarter, and more responsible. We focus on technical cooling solutions, such as air cooling and direct liquid cooling, designed to reduce the building’s overall energy footprint.

We aim to design data centers where cooling requires as little energy as possible, even as computing power increases significantly. This begins at the architectural design stage by facilitating airflow circulation, limiting unnecessary thermal loads, anticipating the evolution of technologies, enabling heat recovery, and simplifying operations.

Data center: a project on the scale of the territory

A data center is never an isolated object. Its location is a true urban planning issue: how does it integrate? What can it contribute? How can it interact with existing networks?

One of the most relevant answers lies in the recovery of waste heat. The heat produced by the equipment can become an asset for the city: supplying a district heating network, supporting a local industry, contributing to the territory’s energy transition.

Thus, Patriarche prioritizes a partnership-based approach with local territories, in order to identify how the installation of digital infrastructures can positively impact urban components.

Bringing AI campuses to life: more than technical spaces

We do not only design computing centers. We imagine AI campuses, where the technical meets the human.
Around the computing core, spaces for training, innovation, research, offices, workshops, and services can emerge. These hybrid places give new value to the infrastructure: they become learning platforms, spaces for exchange, and levers for local economic development.
The data center is no longer a closed-off area; it becomes a living place, capable of creating activity and knowledge.

Consortium Lumière: making computing a national infrastructure

This vision is also part of a broader dynamic. With the Lumière Consortium, Patriarche contributes to a national ambition: making computing power a strategic resource for France. The objective is clear: to create large-scale computing capacities, structured as a true national infrastructure, with predominantly French and European governance.
This requires sites capable of hosting the future of high‑performance computing while remaining connected to the territories that host them.

Lumière carries a strong idea: computing is not only a technical issue, but a pillar of sovereignty, innovation, and competitiveness. Our role is to bring a coherent, sustainable architecture aligned with the needs of the coming years.

A data center is not just a container for data. It is a piece of public infrastructure, an actor of the territory. It must be robust, but also flexible. Powerful, but also responsible. Technical, but never disconnected from reality.

At Patriarche, we choose a model that places flexibility, impact, and territorial anchoring at the heart of the project. Data centers designed to last, to evolve, to contribute.

Credits

©Patriarche