Rethinking Energy at the Building Scale

Within the broader climate focus of the Typologies of Climate Regimes studio, this thesis explores how microclimatic diversity can create different comfort zones at the building scale. Microclimatic strategies, found in vernacular architecture and continued in contemporary projects, use limited resources efficiently to shape these zones. The focus on energy efficiency is pressing, since buildings account for roughly 35 to 40 percent of global energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

Offices, homes, and industrial spaces usually come to mind in this context, but a new energy-intensive building type is rapidly emerging: the data center. Powering AI, cloud computing, streaming, and digital storage, data centers already use around 2% of global electricity, a share expected to reach 4% in the coming years. Despite their growing role in everyday life, they remain hidden technical infrastructures. In his Server Manifesto, Niklas Maak argues for turning them into social infrastructures integrated into everyday life and society. Bringing them into cities, however, raises challenges of waste heat, grid demand, and water consumption, and reusing their excess heat to warm homes could combine environmental responsibility with social integration. This leads to the central question of the thesis: how can data centers evolve from isolated technical elements into social and environmental systems powered by renewable energy, creating a new model of rural urbanization?

Two Rural Landscapes

To explore microclimatic strategies and develop an adaptive typology that responds to all four seasons, the thesis focuses on southeastern Turkey, a region with challenging climatic conditions and energy-related issues. Its rural landscape is shaped by two typologies. The traditional rural landscape is made of clusters of houses surrounded by agricultural fields. Alongside it, a new rural typology has emerged, in which vast, highly automated solar power plants are replacing agricultural land as the main source of income. Supported by the government, these plants are widespread across the region because of its high solar exposure, and they appear at different scales and in different configurations depending on the landscape.

The project area, Viranşehir, sits within this setting. Its changing environmental conditions call for structures that can adapt to them, and the frequency of solar plants shows how much renewable energy potential the region holds. This led to the idea of developing a prototype that can be built alongside these solar plants, populating them with housing and everyday life instead of leaving them as isolated energy fields.

Solar Energy, Data Center, and Village as One System

The model connects solar energy, the data center, and village life in a self-sustaining cycle. It responds to climatic challenges, creates new economic opportunities, and revitalizes rural life. Each of the three components is examined individually before they are brought together in the final design.

The first component is the solar power plant. In Viranşehir, an arid climate and high solar exposure make solar energy the key resource for developing a new rural settlement, and it powers the whole system.

The second component is the data center, designed as a modular underground structure to reduce solar exposure. This arrangement allows excess heat to be released in summer and reused to warm homes in winter, connecting technical infrastructure with everyday life.

The third component is the village, inspired by the traditional settlements of the region. Their courtyard-based organization and modular arrangement of living spaces became key principles in developing the new rural typology.

Creating a Thermal Gradient

The village is organized around courtyards, a principle taken from the region’s traditional settlements. Modular, function-oriented units are brought together beneath a larger protective structure, which creates in-between spaces that sit between the different functions. These intermediate zones act as buffers and shared places where everyday life unfolds.

Each unit can be conditioned individually through modular elements and operable components, so users can adjust their own surroundings. Together, these layers form a user-controlled thermal gradient in which different levels of climate and comfort coexist. In this way, the courtyard setting, the in-between spaces, and the modular units work together to create microclimates at the building scale.

A Single Prototype: Shell, Village, and Data Center

A larger protective shell covers the village and the spaces beneath it, shading the settlement while the courtyards and units below carry daily life. Underground, a technical layer houses the modular data center, kept out of the sun and connected to the homes above through its reusable waste heat. Together, the shell, the village, and the data center form one prototype that can be adapted to solar power plants across the region, depending on local conditions and needs.

The New Rural Urbanization

Because the prototype is made of single units, they can be combined in many different ways, and the arrangement can change with local conditions and needs. For this scenario, a linear alignment proved to be the best option, allowing the units to line up alongside the solar plant.

To support a functioning rural community, additional elements are added to the settlement: a village square, a marketplace, local shops, a playground, and a cattle farm. Green areas and water bodies further improve the microclimate and the quality of everyday life. Together, they form a new model of rural urbanization in which renewable energy, digital infrastructure, and village life coexist within one adaptable climatic system.

Model Photographs

Model photos by Leonard Clemens.