Vantage Data Centers Announces Opening Of Second London Campus With Landmark Public Art Installation

Campus adds 20MW of IT capacity and unveils one of Europe’s largest permanent public art installations during London Design Festival, September 13-21

DENVER & LUXEMBOURG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vantage Data Centers, a leading global provider of hyperscale data centers, today announced its second London data center campus (LHR2) will open at the end of September. Located in London’s Park Royal district, the 194,000-square-foot (18,000 square meters) facility will deliver 20MW of IT capacity, representing a £250 million investment into the local economy.

Coinciding with this year’s London Design Festival taking place from Sept. 13-21 and in association with the Park Royal Design District (PRDD), the data center features one of the largest permanent public art installations in Europe. Spanning a six-story facade, 11 Million Dots pays homage to the industrial history of Park Royal while celebrating its revitalization as a thriving new urban destination for both residents and businesses. Commissioned with the help of London-based art consultancy, Loom, local artist Rafael El Baz collected ambient noise and machinery sounds from area streets and workshops and recorded more than 120 audio interviews with locals. He then translated his recordings into binary code and audio waveforms and manipulated them to create 11 million perforations that evoke microchips, maps and city landscapes.

As part of Vantage’s ongoing commitment to energy efficiency and sustainability, the LHR2 campus incorporates a number of sustainable features in accordance with BREEAM Excellent status, including air and water source heat pumps and an overall low power usage effectiveness (PUE). In addition, LHR2 is an Urban Greening Factor compliant site and will also connect to the local district heating network to repurpose waste heat.

“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,” said David Howson, president, EMEA, 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 honor 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.”

“It has been a pleasure partnering with Vantage Data Centers and Loom to bring this unique vision to life,” said El Baz. “As an artist, this project was about rethinking what a data center 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 center 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.”

LHR2 is one of two Vantage campuses in London, which is the UK’s largest data center market and the third largest globally; LHR1 in North Acton comprises two facilities totaling 430,000 square feet (40,000 square meters) and will provide a combined 55MW of IT capacity once complete. Additionally, Vantage’s CWL1 Cardiff campus in South Wales remains one of the largest in Europe. Once fully developed, the three UK campuses will offer customers 223MW of IT capacity across more than 2.6 million square feet (244,000 square meters).

For more information about Vantage’s growing EMEA footprint, please visit: https://vantage-dc.com/data-center-locations/emea/.

For more information about the United Kingdom’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, please visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-ai-sector-attracts-200-million-a-day-in-private-investment-since-july.

About Vantage Data Centers

Vantage Data Centers is a global leader in digital infrastructure serving the world’s most influential AI and cloud providers. With operations spanning North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific, Vantage delivers capacity at unrivaled speed and scale, driven by a relentless commitment to operational excellence and customer success. Vantage is empowering transformative companies to shape the future.

For more information, visit http://www.vantage-dc.com.

Contacts

Press Contacts
Mark Freeman
Vantage Data Centers
mfreeman@vantage-dc.com
+1-202-680-4243

Robin Bectel
REQ for Vantage Data Centers
vdc@req.co
+1-202-936-6335

Nigel Parker
Fulfil Communications for Vantage Data Centers, EMEA
nigelp@fulfilcom.com
+44-(0)-7778-872-457