Data Centre of the Month: Phocea DC, Marseille, France

Data Centre of the Month: Phocea DC, Marseille, France

Phocea DC server rack

On the southern coast of France, nestled between the Mediterranean Sea and Marseille’s mountainous urban sprawl, a new breed of data centre has emerged, not in the form of a sprawling hyperscale campus, but as a compact, urban-integrated facility tuned to the needs of its environment.

Phocea DC’s first facility may only be 1.2MW and 1,700m², but it represents something far more ambitious: an effort to reshape what local, sovereign infrastructure can look like in one of Europe’s most connectivity-rich and logistically complex cities.

Urban constraints, local credibility

Founded by Marseille native Damien Desanti in 2023, Phocea DC is one of only a handful of data centre operators in France’s second-largest city, a hub more famous for its subsea cable landings than for its available rack space. With rapid digital demand and limited land, the city has long struggled to accommodate new infrastructure.

“Marseille’s growth has outpaced the city’s planning frameworks,” Desanti said. “There are only two real actors here, and urban constraints make new development extremely difficult. That’s why we designed Phocea DC from the beginning to work within the city, not against it.”

Phocea DC server hall room

The site, located in a retrofitted 1970s building, is fully Tier III compliant and targets a PUE of 1.2. But for Desanti, this project is just the start of what he hopes will be a city-wide edge network: smaller, tightly integrated data centres that serve local communities and enterprises while staying firmly within regulatory and environmental limits.

“I live in Marseille,” he added. “That matters. The acceptance of a project like this depends on who’s behind it. We’re not an international giant parachuting in. We’re local, and that makes a difference.”

Designing within the lines

Building a data centre in an old building in central Marseille is not without its challenges. From acoustic requirements to fire safety, every aspect had to be reconsidered, and that’s where Schneider Electric stepped in.

“We were engaged from the very beginning under a full design-build model,” said Hélène Macela-Gouin, VP of Schneider Electric France. “It’s a compact, dense site in the middle of an urban environment, so we had to be smart with everything — footprint, thermal management, resilience, and of course, sustainability.”

Key elements included ultra-compact, low-carbon batteries; high-efficiency UPS systems running at over 99% efficiency; and free cooling systems tailored to reduce energy draw without violating local noise limits.

Schneider also helped integrate its EcoStruxure platform, providing centralised monitoring, real-time control, and predictive maintenance, critical in a market where OPEX discipline is just as important as CAPEX strategy.

Control command centre at Phocea DC in Marseille with Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure platform providing centralised monitoring

“From day one, Desanti said the PUE could not go above 1.2,” Macela-Gouin said. “That was non-negotiable. So we worked backwards — every system was selected or configured based on what could deliver against that promise.”

Connectivity meets context

Marseille is France’s leading cable landing site, with subsea systems like PEACE, EIG, and Hawk among the 16 landing or confirmed to land at its shorelines.

This has made the city a prime candidate for low-latency workloads, but few operators have capitalised on that due to the planning and build challenges.

“The geography of Marseille is both a blessing and a curse,” said Desanti. “It’s a perfect entry point for Europe, but land is scarce and the city is boxed in by mountains. You can’t just drop in a hyperscale campus.”

Instead, Phocea DC aims to bring compute closer to the connectivity and to the people. Its location allows for potential heat reuse with municipal partners, an increasingly relevant factor for project acceptability. The company is already in talks with local stakeholders to scale up its heat integration efforts for future builds.

Heat reuse system in place at Phocea DC

The Marseille site won’t remain a standalone. Desanti confirmed that a second facility is already in the works — this one designed from the ground up with support for immersive cooling and hybrid environments.

“We’ve learned a lot from this first site,” he said. “The next one will build on that, but also take it further. We’re planning native support for direct liquid cooling and higher density deployments, while maintaining the same urban-friendly footprint.”

Phocea also intends to dedicate part of the first site to immersion cooling in the coming months, with plans to expand that model if successful. Schneider, for its part, sees the project as a proving ground for urban-scale modularity.

 “This project showed that you can deliver sustainable, performant infrastructure even under tight physical and environmental constraints,” said Macela-Gouin. “It’s not about size, it’s about precision.”

The local edge, done right

As Europe faces growing power and planning pressures, the idea of doing more with less and building smarter, not just bigger, is becoming a guiding principle.

Phocea DC’s Marseille project may not grab headlines with its megawatt count, but in terms of integration, efficiency, and replicability, it could offer a model for how digital infrastructure evolves inside the city walls.

“It’s a local project, for local needs,” Desanti said. “But the lessons are much bigger than that.”

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