Aggregating suburbia : digital information storage as catalyst to intensify urbanity in suburban Iowa

America's Midwest experienced its most rapid growth after the age of industrialization, stretching the suburban landscape beyond our wildest imagination, to a state of ubiquity. In the case of Iowa, this suburbanization comes at the sacrifice of the most valuable virgin agricultural land. In the midst of this vast expansion of suburban sprawl, we arrive at the critical moment to end this recklessness. Simultaneously, the Internet's pervasiveness perpetuates the gross expansion of the metropolis, appending the city with enormous big boxes to house the world's digital information. Central Iowa is now home to enormous buildings by Google and Microsoft, consuming an exponentially growing amount of Iowa's renewable energy as it exhausts the waste heat into Iowa's rural flatlands. This thesis offers a design proposal for an aggregated suburbia,augmenting the suburban landscape by capitalizing on the trend of enormous data center expansion and, simultaneously,subverting the trend of suburban sprawl. The synthesis of data centers and a new dense suburban center allows the reuse of otherwise wasted energy while calling awareness to the Internet's monumental physical footprint and output of waste heat. The mile-long data center is used as a "microclimate platform" for cultural activities and space for the public collective, providing suburbs with a public identity and heralding a new age of industrialization.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Bindner, Matthew J. (Matthew James)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael Dennis.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/65542

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/65542