A Look Inside NEXTDC’s New Perth Office

Data centre operator NEXTDC recently hired architecture and interior design firm Hames Sharley to design their new part office, part data center in Perth, Australia.

“Hames Sharley worked closely with Urbis and City of Perth (CoP) to deliver an outcome that worked for the local council and the client – balancing the security requirements with the City’s desire for an open and transparent public interface. As the architect and interior designer for P2 Perth, Hames Sharley also worked closely with subcontractors to deliver organised and considered services layout and routes, where possible.

The project provided several challenging scenarios, the greatest involving the need to deliver a non-public building with a public interface that also connected the street level.

Strong, bold architectural accents of red connect to emphasise 3D spatial geometries in NEXTDC, while spatial layering throughout controls lighting and sight-lines. Think refined industrial, exposed services and metallic finishes, which make up the overall design aesthetic.

Hames Sharley added further value by investigating and implementing, (within budget), the inclusion of breakout spaces to the street for additional façade activation and improved user experience.

The newly built facility is the pinnacle of data centre certifications worldwide. Tier IV infrastructure is a building block on top of the requirements for Tier III, adding complete fault tolerance to the infrastructure deployed on-site. Completely fault-tolerant infrastructure means that any individual equipment failures or distribution path interruptions that occur will have no impact on the overall operations of the facility.

The delivery method was Design and Construct, and Hames Sharley engaged early with the Head Contractor and sub-contractors on crucial design elements to ensure these critical elements were not overlooked, and the client achieved their optimal outcome.

With over 12,000m2 of technical data centre space at full fitout, P2 supports the highest-density, compute-intensive requirements for Perth organisations, and can scale from rack-ready cabinets to full contiguous rows and custom cages and private suites.”