Nature Inside and Outside
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Google has found another way to realize its futuristic Mountain View headquarter’s expansion. As the San Jose Mercury News reports, the search engine giant revealed plans to utilize a vacant site just east of their existing Googleplex that was approved by the city almost a decade ago to host nearly 600,000 square-feet of office and commercial space. The approval occurred prior to the city implementing strict legislation that restricts office expansions in the North Bayshore district, therefore Google’s entitlement is essentially “grandfathered in.”
Just last month, Mountain View awarded land to LinkedIn over the proposed Googleplex expansion, forcing the company to move on to a second option. The original proposal featured a transformable office space housed beneath a large translucent glass canopy and surrounded by a lush landscape of pedestrian walkways and bicycle paths.
Google’s ambitious plans to expand its California headquarters in Mountain View took a major blow last night when council members announced their decision to award LinkedIn three-quarters of the North Bayshore area site. As The New York Times reports, LinkedIn won the council over by promising to “preserve business diversity.”
With just 500,000 square-feet of area to work with, Google would only be able to construct one of its four proposed buildings. Unveiled earlier this year, the company’s futuristic “Googleplex,” designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studio, gained international attention for its outlandish plans to build four Lego-like buildings beneath a cluster of translucent canopies.
The idea is simple. Instead of constructing immoveable concrete buildings, we’ll create lightweight block-like structures which can be moved around easily as we invest in new product areas. Large translucent canopies will cover each site, controlling the climate inside yet letting in light and air. With trees, landscaping, cafes, and bike paths weaving through these structures, we aim to blur the distinction between our buildings and nature. Google’s proposed California headquarters will be built with a team of robotic-crane hybrids known as “crabots.” These crabots would, in theory, establish a “’hackable’ system for the building of the interior structures,” says the documents, that would allow for limitless, easy, and affordable reconfiguration of space throughout the building’s life.
GOOGLE / BIG / HEATHERWICK STUDIO