French engineering company SPIE has completed construction work on FRA16, Interxion's latest data center in Frankfurt, Germany.

First announced in November 2020, the company this week announced it had completed the full-scale implementation of the new facility. Based at Interxion’s Ostend campus at Hanauer Landstrasse, FRA16 offers 4,800 sqm (51,600 sq ft) of white space and 16.5MW.

SPIE notes that as there was no space next to the building or on the ground floor, the facility’s 80-ton transformers were installed on the third floor. SPIE said it had previously worked on Interxion’s FRA6 through FRA10 facilities as well as FRA14.

“The use of a new site management tool and the efficient teamwork of our specialists across all disciplines, numbering as many as 220 at times, were pivotal elements in ensuring that the project was completed according to the timetable agreed in the contract. That makes me particularly proud of my team”, said Paula Guesnet, Head of the Data Competence Center department at SPIE Deutschland & Zentraleuropa. “All the commissioning tests have also been carried out now and were passed with flying colors."

Interxion completed work on the first phase of its last Frankfurt data center, FRA15, in 2020.

Interxion’s big plans for Frankfurt: Digital Park Fechenheim

Though already one of Europe’s largest data center markets, Interxion has plans for almost a dozen more facilities in the city before the end of the decade and has begun work on its next campus and facility.

In August 2021, Interxion laid the foundation stone for its new Digital Park Fechenheim data center campus in Frankfurt and began work on the first FRA17 data center at the site.

When fully built out – Interxion is suggesting as early as 2028 – the park will host 11 data centers and an IT area of ​​100,000 square meters (1 million sq ft) and 200MW of capacity. FRA17 is due to go live later this year.

Based in the east of the city at the former headquarters of German mail-order company Neckermann, the park includes the Egon-Eiermann building. Designed by German modernist architect Egon Eiermann and built around 1959 in 180 days, the seven-story concrete building is seen as one of the earliest examples of modern industrial age. Neckermann went into bankruptcy in 2012; Interxion acquired the site in 2020.

“The Neckermann dispatch center was considered the largest construction site in Europe at the time; at that time, this large structure was a novelty,” said Prof. Dr. Markus Harzenetter, President of the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Hesse. “The construction of the Neckermann mail-order center not only marks the beginning of the modern mail-order business, but also represents a period of economic and social upswing in the Federal Republic of Germany after the Second World War. The restoration of the original, The differentiated colors of the facade and the preservation of the spatial structure of the former company canteen are to be seen as a success for the Hessian monument landscape and the nationwide architectural history.”

FRA18 will see Interxion expand the Eiermann building itself; the front building and the facade with around 1,000 windows will be retained while the rest of the building will be converted to house a 45,000 sqm (484,000 sqft) data center. Work on FRA18 is due to begin in 2022.

“With the construction of the Digital Park Fechenheim we will create Frankfurt's largest data center under one roof. This innovative large-scale project combines apparent opposites: the preservation of listed buildings, such as the architecturally valuable Eiermann building, and the construction of cutting-edge data centers to strengthen Frankfurt as a digital hub,” said Volker Ludwig, Managing Director of Interxion Deutschland.