Google gets to keep its throne
When it comes to talks of the coolest offices around the world, Google wins hands down.
While most of us feel lucky enough just to have a table of our own, Google’s employees enjoy a wide range of quirky amenities that an interior designer wouldn’t even dream of incorporating into a professional setting. From a full-fledged rock climbing wall to miniature golf on the roof, there are no qualms that Google has indeed achieved its goal to be “the happiest, most productive workplace in the world.”
Google Campus
However, being one of the world’s most innovative companies, we know Google always has bigger plans up its sleeves. Just two years ago, Google first announced plans for its futuristic new campus; this month, it released updated plans and renderings of how the new campus will look like when it is completed in 2019.
The new campus will be known as Google Charleston East, a moniker that reads much more formal than the Googleplex. It will also be located near its head office in Mountain View, California, marking an unprecedented expansion move where Google will be building the office from the ground up, instead of taking over previously existing buildings.
Same Team That Designed NTU’s Campus
Designed by Bjarke Ingels, a Danish architect who’s also working on the 2 World Trade Center, and Thomas Heatherwick, an English designer whose team designed the Nanyang Technological University’s Learning Hub (you know, the building that looks like a delicious stack of dim sum baskets), the proposed building will be two-storey tall and approximately 595,000 square feet.
Here’s how it will look like:
The most distinctive part of the building is a smart, canopy-like structure that regulates the climate inside, checks air quality, and manages noise level to ensure it doesn’t get too loud within the building. The campus is also surrounded by crosswalks and bike lanes, a key feature that will appeal to its passel of active employees.
“Instead of constructing immovable concrete buildings, we’ll create lightweight block-like structures which can be moved around easily as we invest in new product areas,” Google writes.
Nature will not be compromised in the making of the modern architecture. In fact, it will be intricately interwoven with the campus, providing plenty of green spaces for Google employees to kick back on.
The plan is also to provide local businesses such as restaurants with retail opportunities.
“Today, we want to create office spaces that don’t just provide a great home for Google, but which also work for the city that has given us so much.”
Most importantly, the Google Charleston East will be open to the public, who will get to enjoy unrestricted access on the first level of the brand new campus and its building. That means all of us will be able to experience its grandeur in its entirety if we ever make it to Mountain View.
Recently, the City of Mountain View has given their nod of approval for Google to start constructing the campus. The new building is slated to be completed in about 30 months.