London, United Kingdom
Heatherwick Studio and BIG create Google’s “first-ever purpose-built headquarters,” redefining human-centric, repurposing how buildings integrate with nature, providing healthy workplaces.
The 102,000m² scheme named Bay View Campus is one of a pair of sister developments in California.
The other, dubbed Charleston East and also drawn up by Thomas Heatherwick’s practice and BIG, is due to be completed next year.
Canopies with wave-like clerestories on the two office “tents” shelter a “village” of workspaces, meeting areas, cafés, and a gym and sports center.
This, says Heatherwick Studio, allows “everyone [to] work together, under the same sky, instead of in cramped floors stacked above a spacious office lobby for guests.”
Google’s workgroups are split into neighborhoods of 40 to 80 people and arranged around their own respective courtyards, incorporating works of art.
Heating and cooling for the project are supplied by the largest geothermal pile system in North America, incorporating below-ground pipes with a combined length of almost 100 miles, covering an area equal to 12 American football fields
The three Bay View buildings – a pair of offices and a 1,000- seat auditorium – feature lightweight, tent-like roofs with ‘dragon-scale’ photovoltaic tiles, which will generate 40 percent of the scheme’s energy needs.
The buildings are powered in part by a first-of-its-kind dragon scale solar skin, which generates 40% of its annual electricity.
Combined with power from nearby wind farms, Bay View will be one of Google’s first campuses to operate on carbon-free energy 90% of the time.
To heat and cool the buildings, Bay View also houses the largest geothermal pile system in North America, which is estimated to reduce carbon emissions by almost 50% and water used for cooling by 90%.
Project: Bay View HQ
Architects: Heatherwick Studio and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)
Project Leaders: Christopher McAnneny and Sarah Gill
Group Leaders: Eliot Postman and Stuart Wood
Designer Team: Sam Aitkenhead, Nick Arthurell, Angela Bailen Lopez, Megan Burke, Kyriakos Chatziparaskevas, Michael Chomette, German De La Torre, Nilufer Kocabas, Andre Kong, Steven Howson, Matthijs La Roi, Francis Lam, Adrienne Lau, Barbara Lavickova, Michael Lewis, Gabriel Piovanetti, Tom McKeogh, Arturo Revilla, Miguel Rus, Ville Saarikoski, Ricardo Sosa Mejia, Chris Stone, Skye Yuxi Sun, Cassandra Tsolakis, and Priscilla Wong
Client: Google
Photographers: Iwan Baan
