Located in central Stockholm is the headquarters of Bahnhof, a Swedish Internet Service Provider and host with one of the coolest data centers on the planet. It gained notoriety a few years back as the former home of Wikileaks.
Named Pionen White Mountains, it is located 30 meters (100 ft) under the granite rocks of the Vita Berg Park in Stockholm. The location was a former nuclear bunker and command center during the Cold War.
It took more than two years to blast out the 141,000 cubic feet of extra space that Bahnhof needed to fit its backup generators and server racks into the caves. The total space comprises roughly 1,200 square meters (12,900 square feet) and there were several design challenges that Albert France-Lanord Architects had to address.
The biggest challenge was working with a space which at first didn’t offer one square angle: the rock. Also, the main room is not a traditional space limited by surfaces but defined by the emptiness inside a mass. The choice of lightning was also challenging. Albert France-Lanord tried to bring as much variation as possible, otherwise it would be easy to lose the feeling of time in such an enclosed space.
Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung, who worked briefly as a film archivist before getting into the data-center business, says that he immediately thought of putting plants in the underground caves to capture the computers-meet-plants vibe of the film Silent Running.
To learn more about Bahnhof’s services, security and intense focus on privacy, be sure to check out their official website: www.bahnhof.net
[Sources: Bahnhof, Wired, Architecture News Plus]
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Video Tour of Bahnhof
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