Duvall Decker has been engaged by the University of Mississippi to design and realize a new 20,767-square-foot, state-of-the-art secure data center facility to house all the critical data communication, academic, service, and research systems. As part of the project, the existing 17,000-square-foot data center will be renovated to house other information, technology support, and academic facilities.
The new University of Mississippi Data Center offers N+1 redundancy in its systems and architecture. The facility is designed to accommodate growth, opening with a 500kW power capacity but with enough open space to permit additional equipment needed for up to one megawatt of power usage. The server room is located in the center of the building which is wrapped by the rest of the facility’s program, offering a protective redundancy in plan. The double shell roof creates redundancy in section.
Two layers of enclosure ensure protection from the intrusion of wind damage and rain. The upper roof adds a second benefit by sheltering the interior enclosure from solar heat gain, thus reducing the already high internally generated cooling loads created by the servers. The enclosure offers limited opportunities for windows requiring careful consideration of the architecture’s skin. This creates a surface with a richness of light and shadow that will fit into the existing traditional brick and stone campus architecture. A dynamic play of daily and seasonal light will animate the surface created by an offset texture brick pattern. Each modular brick is rotated in place by ten degrees, activating the building’s surfaces with light and shadow throughout the day.
The facility traverses the sloped site with three different floor elevations, which are exploited to allow for easier integration of the data center equipment and distribution paths, particularly those underneath the server room’s raised floor system.
Duvall Decker was assisted by Walter P. Moore, Newcomb & Boyd, Allen Engineering and Science, Leading Edge Design Group, and WAS Landscape Architects.
