#. Open Data:
Re-Imagining Data Infrastructure
UC Berkeley Design Studio 100D,
The City as Storage, Building Stock in the San Francisco Bay Area
Academic, 2025
Individual Work
Instructor:
Georgios Eftaxiopoulos
In today’s context of global instability, storage facilities have become powerful infrastructures that shape cities and territories, evolving from simple warehouses into massive, centralized systems controlled by governments and corporations. This course examines the architectural and political dimensions of these spaces, focusing on their roles in systems of extraction, control, and accumulation. Centered on San Jose—an often-overlooked but critical hub in the San Francisco Bay Area’s logistics network—students will explore alternatives to top-down models by designing community-based, self-built storage architectures. These projects will reimagine storage not just as a functional necessity, but as a tool for collective empowerment, resilience, and a redefinition of how and where accumulation takes place.
Open Data reimagines the neighborhood data center as an energy self-sufficient, community-centered civic space in San Jose’s Mayfair neighborhood. Addressing the hidden environmental impact of digital storage—estimated at 1.3 million kWh annually for 136 petabytes of data—the project proposes a solar-powered micro data center that merges technical infrastructure with public life. Organized around eight data storage columns, the center weaves together cultural, ecological, and recreational programs to foster awareness of digital consumption and energy use. By rooting data infrastructure in local space and community, the project challenges corporate cloud systems and envisions storage as a shared, legible, and socially generative public resource.
Site Condition
Top image:
Site Plan of the urban block
Bottom image:
Analogous Drawing exploring site condition as it currently exists today
Located in Mayfair, San Jose, this urban block lies between Alum Rock Avenue and McCreery Avenue. It currently includes an affordable community housing complex,
one undeveloped lot, and the rest are several single-family residences. The stark contrast between these two types of housing highlights the socioeconomic divide among residents living on the same block.
Case Study
Top left image: Floor Plan
Top right image: Axon Floor Plan
Bottom left image: Photo of STACK INFRASTRUCTURE with smoke and pipes
Bottom right image: Detail Drawing of a data column
STACK INFRASTRUCTURE’s 380,000-square-foot facility in San Jose is one of 89 data centers operated globally, reflecting the immense scale and security of the physical systems behind today’s digital economy. Despite the illusion of immateriality, digital infrastructure relies on energy-intensive data centers, fiber networks, and power grids controlled by tech giants. As Shoshana Zuboff argues, these corporations extract behavioral data for profit, reinforcing their dominance over both digital economies and energy systems. Data centers are major electricity consumers, tying digital infrastructure to global energy politics and environmental impact. As control over data increasingly overlaps with control over energy, rethinking the interconnected nature of data, power, and infrastructure becomes essential to addressing the growing influence of the digital economy.
Storage Unit: Precedent & Proposal
Left image: Axon of storage unit precedent,
agrivoltaic farming
Right image: Axon of the proposed storage unit
Agrivoltaic farming is the practice of co-locating agriculture with solar energy systems to enable dual land use. Inspired by this concept, the project reimagines a data storage column situated beneath a solar panel canopy—creating a system that is both spatially efficient and energy self-sufficient.
Re-Imagining Data Infrastructure
From top to bottom:
Render - Forest Zone Interior
Render - Recreation Zone Interior
Render - Culture Zone Interior
Render - Forest Zone Entrance
Site Plan of the proposed urban block
Zoom In Plan, Zoom In 30-Degree Axonometric Plan - Column System, Zoom In 30-Degree Axonometric Plan - Roof System
Open Data centers around three interwoven programmatic zones—culture, forest, and recreation—that transform a neighborhood micro data center (NMDC) into a vibrant civic space. Located in San Jose’s Mayfair neighborhood, the project responds to the immense, often invisible energy demands of digital storage by proposing an energy self-sufficient facility powered by a 52,000-square-foot solar roof. Eight data storage columns, housing hybrid racks of HDDs and SSDs, serve as both infrastructural cores and spatial anchors within this landscape. By merging technical systems with public life, Open Data challenges the isolation of digital infrastructure and envisions a new kind of urban commons—one that connects community, sustainability, and the everyday realities of data.