Unsurprisingly, Google isn't just settling for a more modern update to the vast, sprawling series of buildings that already make up its Mountain View offices. Instead, the company worked with Danish architect Bjarke Ingels from the Bjarke Ingels Group and Thomas Heatherwick of Heatherwick Studio to build a series of city block-sized "canopies" — glass greenhouse-style buildings. Heatherwick told the SVBJ that the canopies were akin to "a piece of glass fabric, and draping it across some tent poles." Despite the abundance of glass, a "high-tech shading system" will be built in to keep the buildings from being too warm.
What's even wilder about these canopy buildings is that the basic building components like floors, ceilings, and walls will be reconfigurable in a matter of hours, thanks to small cranes and robots. It's a wild idea, and Google admits that much of the technology necessary for such a plan doesn't yet exist. "We envision there will be some more permanent structures like stairwells and restroom cores and things like that," David Radcliffe, Google's vice president of real estate, said to the SVBJ. "Then we think there will be other components you can actually take out and put in.
Rather than build in entirely new parts of Mountain View, Google is instead going to redevelop four existing sites where it already has buildings, but significantly increase the square footage — making up a total of 3.4 million square feet. It'll be a while before these buildings are ready, however — the first of four areas being redesigned isn't expected to be finished until the first quarter of 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment