I don’t think a lot of people consider the spatial implications of the online world. By this, I’m specifically referring to the massive data centers required to power the internet.

Earlier this year Facebook opened its first European data center in Sweden, less than 70 miles from the arctic circle. It’s 900,000 square feet. That’s about equivalent to a 102 storey condo tower.

Behind the virtual worlds we live in - Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and others - lies nondescript buildings with repeating rows of machines inside them. They’re the complete antithesis of the vibrant lives we pretend to have on the consumer web, but they’re making it all possible. It feels just like the Matrix.

And there are some interesting shifts taking place in the data center space. Facebook - through its Open Compute Project - now designs its own centers and makes the work available to others, for free. It’s an “open hardware” play that could threaten incumbents in the space such as Dell and Cisco.

Facebook’s goal is “to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost.” Their Swedish outpost represents their first self-designed center. And it’s proven to be a highly efficient one.

While the average data center might use 3 watts to produce 1 watt of computing tower, Facebook’s Swedish center was able to get that ratio down to 1.04 : 1, largely because the colder climate allowed for a dramatic reduction in cooling loads. It makes a ton of a sense.

I’ve actually thought about this before. Why aren’t more data centers - which have massive cooling requirements - built in colder climates? I just so happen to know of a country with lots of prime arctic circle real estate.

Tonight is Nuit Blanche in Toronto. Running from sunset to sunrise, the festival is a collection of more than 110 contemporary art projects scattered all around downtown. It’s one of my favourite events in the city.

This year one of my good friends has organized an installation called My Virtual Dream. It involves some sort of large dome structure and is located at University & College in front of the UofT pharmacy building on the north west corner.

But other than the art, one of the things I love about Nuit Blanche is what it does for the city. It brings everybody out and onto the streets in order to explore and experience the city in a totally different way. Spaces get repurposed and new environments emerge. It’s a fun time to be in Toronto.

I was reading Novae Res Urbis this morning and they had a piece on the 3 tower Mirvish + Gehry proposal in Toronto’s Entertainment District. It was talking about David Mirvish’s “sales pitch” to the Empire Club of Canada this week, an attempt to help overcome the criticism around the design, height and overall density of the project. The article ended by saying that the developer will be appealing to the OMB this January.

I know that I’m probably biased in this matter, but I fail to understand the concern around height and density - particularly since the site is 2 blocks from a subway station. Why are we - citizens and policy makers - so obsessed with building height? Good architecture and urban design involves a lot more than the number of floors. Can we not have more sophisticated conversations about built form rather than fixating ourselves on building height?

Secondly, whenever a building gets proposed in Toronto that attempts to, literally, step outside of the box it gets pegged as controversial. Take, for example, the Royal Ontario Museum by Daniel Libeskind. When people used to ask me what I thought of the crystal addition, I used to say that I was a fan simply because it was pissing off so many people. Love it or hate it, it’s architecture. The same can’t be said for a lot of the other stuff going up in this city. Why doesn’t mediocrity invoke the same response? It should.

So my issue is that we seem to be far more comfortable accepting banality than we are with accepting bold new changes like the Mirvish + Gehry proposal. And frankly, if we could actually pull off three 80+ storey towers, it would be down right impressive in this market. How many cities in the world have a real estate market robust enough to support this scale of development?

But this is not a post of unconditional support. I do have concerns.

I’m concerned that 4 heritage designated properties will need to be destroyed in order for this project to move forward. This makes me wonder: What’s the point of a designation if the building can still be demolished? I’m actually surprised that this topic hasn’t been getting its fair share of attention. Again, we’ve been more interested in talking about building height.

Further west along King Street, I have similar concerns with a development proposal that would demolish “restaurant row.” This a spectacularly successful - albeit touristy - restaurant strip and I would hate to see it go. It’s difficult to create this kind of fine grain retail experience from scratch. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in development. I am a developer, after all. But I don’t believe we should be so quick to erase our history.