Lightweight domes: rethinking the data centre envelope

Data centres are moving away from box-shed envelopes. Domed and long-span ETFE enclosures over cooling plant, substations and modular halls give operators a weather cover that installs quickly and imposes very little load on the structure beneath.

The weight advantage matters most on brownfield and constrained sites — former industrial land, capped landfill, tight urban plots — where a conventional roof would trigger expensive ground works.

There is also an argument for treating the ETFE envelope as a demountable asset: it can come off if the site plan changes, and the foil goes back into recycling. That flexibility is hard to price in glass or metal.