HAL 9000 Cemex Computer Centre - Monterrey, MX (Sept. 1997)
Designed by Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners
“When Mexican cement producer Cemex commissioned Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners to design a new computer centre to manage its global production, stock and distribution round the clock, total security was a priority. So was a high degree of environmental control, given the Mexican climate. But this project is no forbidding high-tech bunker. Its futuristic interior projects a dynamic company identity, reflecting the ingenuity with which its designers have turned constraints into opportunities.
A key to the approach is the use of two different lighting scenarios: one for everyday and one for special VIP visits. Lighting designer on the protect was Jonathan Spews. Visitors experience the different spaces of the budding as though passing through Stanley Kubrick-inspired film sets. The sequence starts as visitors negotiate a special security lock before entering the centre. This in itself is dramatic: a heavy, stainless-steel door slides back to usher visitors into a small, enclosed space ht only by blue indirect lighting in the perforations of the door. Red globes recessed into the ceiling then give the impression of ‘scanning’ the visitor. Finally, only when the sliding door is completely closed, a second set of doors open to reveal the computer centre.
This environment expresses the idea of climate control with an ‘ice house’ aesthetic. Etched glass lenses that emit blue light are set in a raised floor covered with patterned stainless steel. Four etched glass cutouts reveal thousands of cables acting as the nerves of the computer centre. The control desk overlooks the whole operation from an elliptical platform separated only by a full-height glass screen. Staff here work on a carpeted island below a highly translucent textile ceiling that provides warm, indirect light. Client presentations can be protected on to a white, tensioned sail suspended from the concrete slab end wall opposite the control desk. Whoever said computer centres were boring?”
Scanned from ‘International Interiors 7′ (2000)
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