Specializing in the conversion of urban commercial buildings into secure data centres, SLi develops and executes comprehensive design plans for these large-scale industrial facilities, working in close coordination with specialist engineers and contractors as well as leading international tech companies and compliance teams. To date, we have completed over 90,000 sf of urban data centres, corresponding white space, and mission critical facilities, achieving elite, high-performing architectures defined by technical precision, resilience, and functionality.

Our longstanding experience with data centre design allows our team to employ established protocols and strategies and also efficiently generate custom solutions to site-specific contexts. Through a coordinated and collaborative design process with larger project teams, we carefully establish facility layouts to account for efficiency, life safety, clearances, and factors like heat production and cooling. Equipment is meticulously organized to avoid interferences, ensure code compliance, and safeguard the successful installation of technical infrastructures like chillers, generators, and batteries. These spaces are also critically equipped with important security measures and redundant power supply, including the provision of backup power.

Designed to be occupied by corporations with rigorous in-house protocols and compliance requirements, facilities are built to the highest standard of security and operability, with zero possibility of failure. Design execution involves the substantial retrofitting of existing buildings — for instance, office towers — to augment capacity in support of incoming technical systems.

Informed and agile, our firm is accustomed to complying with evolving industry protocols and standards, working closely with clients to achieve specific goals and custom solutions. Our commitment to designing urban data centres that confidently meet security, capacity, and safety requirements, and are also inviting and productive spaces, have resulted in mission critical facilities that are pleasant, safe, and exceptionally reliable tech hubs for the larger populations that depend on them.

Specific expertise and outputs:

• Hot and cold aisle containment with sub-floor plenum

• Fuel farms with high-performance fire separations and spill containment

• Generators and day tanks

• Enwave deep lake water cooling

• Secure meet-me rooms

• Centralized connectivity and optimized equipment installation infrastructure, including exterior mechanical chases and interior fire-rated risers for fibre network wiring and mechanical systems

• Monitored lobby entrances with anti-tailgate security and CTV surveillance