This project is located on a premium peninsula waterfront site on the shore of Wuhan’s South Lake. It was the largest data center complex in Asia when it was first built. Today it still is one of the world’s largest disaster backup centers for one of the largest banks in the world.

The project consists of three independent data center buildings, a call center building, two operation and maintenance buildings for CCB’s national data center security, a conference center, and two administrative buildings.

To minimize overbuilding along the lakeshore, the local planning regulations require that we break up the building volume mass according to a set ratio. This is to allow view penetrations from all lakesides. It also limits the height of the building to 30 meters. We used design features like stepping down building volume for roof terraces and pushing up building mass with colonnades on the waterfront.

We also designed sunken plazas to bring daylight into the large cafeteria and fitness spaces on the B1 basement level. In comparison, we elevated the three data center buildings to minimize flooding risk to the most important buildings on this campus.

The three data center buildings are designed to have four stories with first-floor height at 8 meters and other floors at 6.2 meters. The architectural facade shows more solidity and strength. Other buildings have an average 4.2 meters floor height and with facade treatment more open and softer with graceful curve lines. The entire campus is designed to be LEED-certified silver as per US Green Building Council standards.