Digital industry is wildly expanding in China given 700 millions potential users and Guangzhou-based Cloud DCS (initials of Data Centres Services) is a major player in this industry providing internet services through data centres to the like of Alibaba, QQ and Baidu. Italian architect Alberto Puchetti director of Hong Kong-based design company Arboit Limited got briefed in late 2013 to design a company headquarter inside an existing 20.000 sqm industrial building including offices, rooms containing thousands of servers’ racks, areas to meet clients and multimedia show rooms introducing company services and envisioning internet culture and history. Because of its abstract nature internet services rarely got to have a proper brand image. The purpose of this project is also to translate into a figurative language the reality of internet as a truly important agent of change in our life and society.
The concept of ”flying through the sky” emerged naturally as figurative theme to translate in a design vision the idea of digital highway as a stream of data crossing the skies to serve our lives. Fluidity and dynamism of clouds shaped by winds, is expressed by a layered ceiling 30 meters long sculpture to epitomize digital communications across space and highlight its immaterial and yet powerful nature. This ceiling feature is made of metal profiles painted in seven gradients of blue, covered by Barrisol’s stretch fabric back-illuminated by neon lights. The same rarefied artwork defined by the ceiling is reflected on the floor as a gigantic painting printed on the resin creating the impression of walking on the sky. All colours used interior design are exclusively white and seven tones of blue : these colours define the brand identity as also for the signage and the artworks.
All architecture pavilions, rooms and built-in furniture in this project are characterized by a common theme of movement and are shaped in aerodynamic curves: these rooms and installations positioned in between ceiling and floor layered artworks seems to whirl and move along the coloured lines as if they were navigating across the skies of intelligence’s digital highways.
