A couple of weeks ago, we spoke with architect Lauren Bucher about her experience as a designer on some of SNHA’s most complex data center projects. This week, principal Timothy Connor reacts to Lauren’s thoughts, urging design curiosity and the value that innovation provides for SNHA’s robust hyperscale data center programs.

What do you tell young architects and designers to pay attention to while designing for a constantly evolving building type, and how does that improve our ability to be responsive to our clients?

In the data center typology, the pace at which these buildings evolves certainly keeps us on our toes. There’s always something new to learn and always a new technology on the horizon. We always tell our young architects and designers to remain curious and look to build upon each and every lesson, but to not hold on too tightly to any preconceived notions of how things are being done or have been done before. These buildings really do offer a bit of a glimpse at the future of our profession in many ways, and maintaining that combination of curiosity and flexibility is key.

Understanding our clients’ need for innovation, and coupling that with this curiosity and flexibility has become a core aspect of how our firm has developed, always with an eye to the future of how buildings are designed and constructed. Being on the leading edge of design and construction technology has always been a goal for the firm and our clients share this goal. They often use the term “bending the industry” – meaning to not simply accept how things have been done, but rather to use the scale and pace of these projects to explore how they might be done – better, faster, more sustainably, and so on.

View the original interview with Lauren here.