Italicum is planned on land west of Bari previously considered for advanced semiconductor production, in a region where renewable energy, Mediterranean subsea connectivity and technical skills are already present. The project asks what an AI factory should become when it is no longer inserted into a Northern European industrial estate, but into the landscape, climate and economy of Southern Italy.

The challenge

Gigawatt-scale infrastructure only becomes viable when power, connectivity and consent arrive together. Puglia has strong renewable generation and strategic access to Mediterranean fibre routes. The harder question is how a campus of this scale establishes legitimacy within its region.

A conventional model — large technical buildings, extensive compounds and a purely extractive relationship with land and energy — would struggle to make that case. The design therefore had to operate simultaneously at the scale of the building, the campus and the wider regional landscape.

Design response

Compactness became one of the principal design tools.

Within an 800-hectare development zone, the main campus is concentrated within approximately 145 hectares, with around 44 hectares covered by buildings. This reduces internal infrastructure distances, clarifies operational movement and preserves a much larger proportion of the wider area for renewable generation and ecological continuity.

Six development plots are arranged as parts of one system. Each is approximately 13 hectares and supports large-scale IT capacity through a common reference-design logic. The reference facility is conceived as a low-carbon, single-storey building containing four liquid-cooled halls and a dedicated network building. Construction, operation, substations and laydown are organised along clear infrastructural axes so that future phases can grow without repeatedly reorganising the campus.

Phasing follows the anticipated power ramp rather than an abstract real-estate sequence. A central construction hub supports successive phases and is designed to evolve towards on-site assembly of technical equipment as the campus matures.

At the centre, an Innovation Quarter brings together workplace, conference, academic and mobility functions. Its position matters: the social and institutional life of the project is embedded within the campus rather than appended to its perimeter.

Outcome

Italicum proposes an AI factory that is shaped by the conditions of Southern Europe rather than imported from elsewhere. Its technical platform is repeatable, but its territorial proposition is specific to the region: renewable energy, connectivity, engineering knowledge, landscape and new forms of economic activity.

The project treats the AI campus not simply as a place where compute is housed, but as a new form of industrial landscape.