Winter Street Architects and their engineering partner AHA Consulting Engineers have been named a finalist for eBay's design challenge to win Project Quicksilver, the company's newest modular data center in South Jordan, Utah.
In 2010 eBay opened its 240,000 s/f flagship data center in Utah, housing eBay.com and Paypal.com. Processing $2,000 in transactions per second, the $287 million facility is the company's largest infrastructure investment to date. Now looking to expand, Project Quicksilver will involve the design and construction of a new building on the South Jordan campus. Seeking to capture the most innovative ideas in data center design, eBay commissioned proposals through an open RFP process. Qualified architecture and engineering firms from around the nation had two months to tackle the challenge and create submissions that addressed eBay's core data center issues.
Winter Street Architects is no stranger to eBay's unique RFP process. Winner of Project Mercury, eBay's first modular data center competition in Phoenix, Arizona; Winter Street Architects knows how to push design boundaries. Slated for full operation this month, Project Mercury employs innovative and effective building technologies that reduce energy costs while improving the environmental sustainability of the data center. Project Quicksilver will be a greenfield construction project optimized for modular data centers, and comprehensive of the designs being implemented in eBay's Project Mercury.
Winter Street's compelling Project Quicksilver proposal focused on the concept of flexibility, while addressing the site's specific needs. The team's cost effective design includes free cooling year round, room for expansion, and the ability to keep up with rapidly changing technologies. Principal architect Mark Meche, along with Project Manager Annette Popp, pitched Winter Street's Project Quicksilver design solution in San Jose, California last Wednesday.