Cato Data Centre

In 2026, Graeme Nicholls Architects was appointed by ILI Group to design a new green data centre near Auchtertool, Fife. The project is the first in a proposed hyperscale network across Scotland’s central belt, known as ‘The Stoics’, and represents a major investment in Scotland’s economy and infrastructure. Its name reflects the client’s interest in the Ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism, with its associations of strength, resilience and endurance.

The design draws inspiration from the ancient Greek stoa, a covered colonnaded walkway where Stoic philosophers first gathered to exchange ideas, and from the related classical tradition in which proportion, order and harmony were understood as expressions of a wider philosophical worldview, as seen in the work of the Greek sculptor Polykleitos. These proportional principles informed a series of stepped forms, articulated in profiled anodised aluminium cladding, which give the building a robust and disciplined architectural expression while mediating between human-scale and hyper-scale.

• Location: Auchtertool, Fife

• Client: ILI Group

• Size: 280,000m2

• Status: Ongoing