The complex of four objects will be located in the same town of Mountain View in Silicon Valley, where the headquarters of Google is now located.
The main feature of the ensemble will be its “fusion with nature”: the buildings will be surrounded by natural and restored ecosystems, and the interiors are also planned to be actively landscaped. The campus should be an attractive place to walk and socialize, with Google executives looking to open it up to locals as well. This kind of democracy is very different from isolation.
Apple's new headquarters, currently under construction in Cupertino by Foster + Partners, but for both cutting-edge corporations, the future of work - at least intellectually - is associated with meadows and groves. Given their combined influence, one can even speak of a certain trend.
The current Google complex is surrounded by endless parking lots, but on the new campus, the need for them should disappear thanks to the use of self-driving electric vehicles, which Google is developing, and bicycles.
Under the huge glass roofs, easily transformable work and recreational areas will be located: the customer believes that the requirements for the workplace can change dramatically over the next 10-20 years, so you need to be prepared for anything. In addition, different parts of Google - for example, programmers and electric vehicle engineers in charge of the search engine algorithm - have very different needs.
Google Vice President Dave Radcliffe, in charge of real estate, noted that Bjarke Ingels (BIG) and Thomas Heatherwick Studio (Heatherwick Studio) were chosen because they are two "best [in class] architects who are able to make a truly unusual project. At the same time, Ingels's buildings attracted the customer with a thoughtful relationship of function and form and focus on people, and Heatherwick's work - with attention to human scale and beauty.
