In recent years, the Netherlands has quietly become one of Europe's most attractive locations for data centers. Dutch Data Landscape is a detailed atlas that sets out to understand and map this phenomenon. The project investigates not just where data centers are located, but why the Netherlands has become such a fertile ground for them.
strategy
The starting point was a simple question: why here? Tax incentives offered one answer, but climate, geography, infrastructure, and political stability all turned out to play a role too. The goal was to build a complete picture of the conditions that make the country an ideal location, and to present the outcome of the research in an accessible way.
design
An atlas format was chosen because it matches the nature of the subject: data centers and their spatial relations. The visual approach takes its cue from data center floor plans, with their strict geometric shapes, grids, and precisely arranged rows of server infrastructure. This technical visual language was translated into the publication's design, giving the atlas a visual logic that comes directly from the subject.
insight
The research made clear that the concentration of data centers in the Netherlands is the result of a very specific set of overlapping conditions. Geography, policy, and infrastructure have combined to create something largely invisible to the public, despite its enormous physical and ecological footprint.
deliverables
The project resulted in a printed atlas documenting the Dutch data center landscape, developed as an autonomous work of visual journalism. It combines original research, cartography, and data visualisation into a single publication. It gives physical form to an infrastructure that most people interact with daily without ever seeing.
