Digital Realty, Ashburn, VA

The data center, as revealed in its plan, is a creature of almost deliberate indifference, a testament to the lack of architectural ambition that defines its purpose. Its layout, a series of repetitive, staggered boxes, betrays no passion or grand design, only the cold logic of efficient space utilization. The plan does not unfold so much as it moans, shuffling back and forth. This lackadaisical jog speaks of a design process that has surrendered to pure utility, a geometry dictated by the constraints of a plot line and the repetitive demands of the machines within. The building's form is less a sculpted object but rather a flaccid

The screen of paltry trees is the final, sad detail in this narrative of architectural surrender. The trees are not a forest, nor are they a grand avenue; they are a thin line of squires, standing as a frail, symbolic barrier against the full, unadulterated view of the data center's sheer scale and banality. They suggest a half-hearted attempt at concealment, a whispered apology to the landscape that can do little to hide the building's massive, indifferent presence. They underscore the data center's unwillingness to fully engage with its surroundings, content to remain a massive, unloved object with a thin, vegetative disguise.