A groundbreaking artificial intelligence computing center has opened in Beijing's Chaoyang District, representing a revolutionary approach to data center design that integrates human activity with advanced computing infrastructure. The SPARK 761 Beijing Digital Economy AIDC, designed by llLab architects, spans 33,765 square meters and serves as the only AI computing power park within Beijing's central urban area, completed in 2025.
The architectural concept fundamentally challenges traditional enclosed data center systems by creating spaces where society, people, and activities coexist with intelligent information systems. Located in the core area of Jiuxianqiao, the building transcends conventional data center design by manifesting as a physical grid system under sunlight that transforms at night into a virtual information body through dynamic lighting and digital displays.
Beyond its intelligent computing rooms and energy support systems, the facility features innovative "black box" and "glass box" spaces that accommodate diverse human activities including offices, exhibition halls, and multi-purpose rooms. The "black box" spaces are positioned by rotating within the conventional grid, creating changing environments that serve as integrated reflections of evolving technology and contemplative content, leading visitors into what designers call the "Computing Power Theater."
The "glass box" concept exposes previously closed-off computing infrastructure to human interaction, fully revealing technological processes within the architectural space. This design encourages proactive engagement, allowing visitors to connect with previously untouchable technology at visible and accessible levels. As ecological partners within the space, humans coexist with invisible information systems, influencing and communicating with the computing processes.
The building's facade system presents a unique dual identity that changes dramatically between day and night. During daylight hours, the structure displays exposed functional hardware, highlighting biological mechanisms like breathing and heartbeat that represent the ecological embodiment of the intelligent entity. Indirect evaporative cooling equipment connects each floor to internal computer room spaces, creating vertically running ductwork that forms a distinctive architectural language.
At night, the building's biological form visually disappears and transforms into expressions through spatial intersections and hidden thought processes. Illuminated intersections of the facade's grid framework and ground-level lighting create a virtual space that overlaps with the physical daytime structure. The building's intelligent entity communicates real-time language to the outside world through internal flexible screens displaying unknown forms of imagery that evolve based on information accumulation and environmental changes.
The interior spaces achieve complete transparency from courtyards to interior areas, fully embracing human activity and introducing public sightlines and social connections. The building's ground floor features versatile open spaces designed for both work and life, aimed at stimulating creativity and ecological exchange within related industries while advancing cutting-edge research development processes.
The north side of the ground floor integrates multiple functions including the Computing Power Theater, offices, coffee shops, casual dining areas, relaxation spaces, conference centers, and multi-purpose halls. The Computing Power Exhibition Hall, open to the public, showcases human developmental progress from the agricultural era through the computing power era, driven by infrastructure advancement and energy source upgrades, ultimately looking toward a future technological landscape where computing power serves as productive force.
The Computing Power Theater serves as a multi-purpose hall and main base for the future Jiuxianqiao Forum, where cutting-edge technologies and technology industry professionals exchange ideas and dialogue, accelerating domestic AI computing power progress in China. The Data Center's Enterprise Command Center and dedicated spaces for showcasing domestically produced chips allow visitors to directly experience operational principles and equipment standards of state-of-the-art data rooms.
The south side ground floor encompasses various office settings serving as an industrial incubation base, connected to the north side by a lifestyle plaza that allows green vitality to flow into the interior. AI ecosystem and operations personnel occupy vertical office spaces on floors two through five, while the building integrates generative space concepts with a furniture laboratory to explore workspaces genuinely suited for the AI community.
More than just a computing power center, the facility represents a comprehensive "tech park" connecting humanity with artificial intelligence. The Beijing Digital Economy Computing Power Center functions as an active "intelligent entity" capable of autonomously completing "metabolism" and achieving self-evolution and growth, scheduling according to demand changes and intelligently adjusting strategies based on load variations.
The project represents a fundamental shift in thinking about AI infrastructure, integrating traditionally separate equipment platform construction with the building itself as one entity. This approach, while facing criticism within social thought inertia, represents what architects believe is the true starting point for making AI human-centric through complete logic rethinking and overturning.
As an artificial intelligence organism, the building incorporates intuitive biological dynamic sensations related to breathing and blood vessels, creating forms where one can perceive internal dynamics of tubular structures under airflow transmission conditions. This biological ecological manifestation remains in preliminary form, with architects envisioning future growth stages that will reveal deeper meaning behind today's embryonic architectural language.
The dynamic facade communicates with the city by visualizing real-time computing power, attempting to interpret unknown aspects of AI's self-awakening and iterative evolution for the first time. The open-ended intelligent computing evolution model, embodied in both architecture and content, allows everyone to directly perceive and communicate with the evolving system, representing a synthesis between AI and human collaboration rather than superficial discussions about technological good and evil.
