Beneath the Cloud: Architecture and Underwater Data Centres in China

Artificial intelligence is frequently described as immaterial, yet it depends on extensive physical infrastructures that consume land, energy, minerals, and water. As global data production accelerates, data centres have become among the most energy-intensive architectural forms of the contemporary moment, intensifying pressures on electricity supply, territorial occupation, and environmental systems. This paper examines China’s emerging under-water data centres (UDCs) as an infrastructure reshaping marine territories, energy geographies, and coastal landscapes. As national computing capacity has expanded rapidly in recent years, data centres were designated a core component of China’s “new infrastructure,” prompting experimental and commercial deployment beneath the sea. The commercial UDC near Lingshui, Hainan, consists of sealed cylindrical pressure vessels installed at depth for long-term autonomous operation, while a parallel offshore fa-cility in Shanghai’s Lingang integrates subsea data modules with offshore wind energy systems. Through typological comparison with Microsoft’s Project Natick and analysis of policy frameworks, material systems, and deployment logistics, the paper argues that UDCs are not merely technical optimizations but architectural reconfigurations. Designed primarily for non-human occupants—servers, cooling fluids, and marine forces—they displace architecture’s conventional human-centered assumptions. By ap-proaching UDCs as relational systems embedded within energetic, ecologi-cal, and geopolitical networks, the paper positions architecture as a media-tor in the material infrastructures that sustain digital computation.