Vantage: What Does a Sustainable Data Centre Sound Like?
Vantage Data Centers announces the launch of its second London data centre campus, known as LHR2.
The new site in the Park Royal Design District opens at the end of September, bringing 194,000 square feet (18,000 square metres) of technical space and 20MW of IT capacity. The project represents a £250m (US$331,000) investment into the London economy.
The opening coincides with the London Design Festival, which runs from 13-21 September. Working with the Park Royal Design District, Vantage unveils one of Europe’s largest permanent public art installations. Spanning six storeys, the piece titled 11 Million Dots celebrates both the industrial past of Park Royal and its modern redevelopment.
Created by local artist Rafael El Baz with consultancy Loom, the work draws on sounds and voices collected from workshops and streets in the district where the data centre is based.
Rafael has recorded more than 120 interviews with local residents and workers before transforming the recordings into binary code and waveforms. The results produce 11 million perforations cut into the facade, resembling microchips, maps and urban skylines.
Sustainable infrastructure and local integration
The LHR2 site is developed with sustainability features to achieve BREEAM Excellent certification, a widely recognised standard for sustainable building design in the UK.
The campus integrates air and water source heat pumps, maintains a low power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio and complies with the Urban Greening Factor, a London planning policy for biodiversity and green infrastructure.
It will also connect into the local district heating network, enabling reuse of waste heat for surrounding buildings.
“Our unrivalled ability to scale rapidly, as evidenced by the launch of our second campus in London, is helping our global hyperscale customers seize the massive opportunities made possible with cloud computing and AI,” says David Howson, President for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Vantage Data Centers.
“This campus was among our UK expansion plans that the Prime Minister referred to at the launch of the U.K. Government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan earlier this year.
“As part of this campus launch, we have the honour of participating in a dynamic, thought-provoking community art project that pays tribute to the area’s important history in the growth and stability of the United Kingdom.”
When a data centre becomes a cultural landmark
For Rafael, the installation redefines how people perceive technical facilities in an urban setting.
“It has been a pleasure partnering with Vantage Data Centers and Loom to bring this unique vision to life,” Rafael says.
“As an artist, this project was about rethinking what a data centre can represent. These buildings are usually hidden in plain sight, yet here we’ve shown they can stand proudly as cultural landmarks.
“By turning the voices and sounds of Park Royal into patterns on the facade, the centre becomes more than a store of digital data, it also preserves the memory and identity of the community.
“Vantage Data Centers has been an incredible partner throughout – open to the idea that infrastructure can move beyond function, becoming socially sustainable, rooted in place-making and meaningful to the people who live and work alongside it.”
The integration of art with the built form of the data centre positions the facility not only as technical infrastructure but also as a public-facing presence. For Vantage, it reflects an approach where critical infrastructure can serve functional and community roles at once.
Expanding UK data centre capacity
LHR2 joins LHR1, the company’s existing North Acton campus. LHR1 consists of two buildings totalling 430,000 square feet (40,000 square metres) and will provide 55MW of IT capacity once development completes.
Together, LHR1 and LHR2 confirm London’s role as the UK’s largest data centre market and the third largest globally.
In addition to its London presence, Vantage operates CWL1 in Cardiff, one of Europe’s largest facilities. Across the three UK sites, Vantage is set to deliver 223MW of IT capacity and more than 2.6m square feet (244,000 square metres) of space.
The launch of LHR2 marks a step in that growth strategy, strengthening London’s role in global data infrastructure while embedding community identity through design and art.
