For an press agency, I received the unique assignment to document one of the most secure and strategic locations in Belgium: the Google Datacenter campus in Saint-Ghislain. Although the site itself is strictly closed to the public, we captured the massive scale of this project with precision from legal flight zones surrounding the perimeter.
A Giant on Belgian Soil What you see here is not just an industrial estate. It is one of the most important hubs of the global internet. The Saint-Ghislain campus was Google’s first European datacenter, opened in 2009, and has since grown into a giant supporting the digital needs of millions of users across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).
Key facts about this site:
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Surface Area: The campus now covers approximately 90 hectares (over 130 football fields).
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Investment: Google has invested more than €3 billion in the Belgian site to date.
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Capacity: The site currently houses five massive datacenter buildings. Construction is already underway on an adjacent plot to nearly double the existing capacity.
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Sustainability: It is one of the most efficient datacenters in the world, using an advanced water-cooling system from the nearby canal, eliminating the need for energy-intensive air conditioning.
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Employment: The site directly employs 400 to 500 specialists, with hundreds of additional indirect jobs created through ongoing construction.
The Mission: Visual Precision For this assignment, we utilized the DJI Matrice 30 for ultra-sharp zoom images and the DJI Avata for an immersive 360° experience. This allowed us to document the expansion works and infrastructure in high detail while remaining strictly outside the no-fly zone.