Google Campus Plan Would Explode the Concept of Buildings, Workspace
Google provided the Silicon Valley Business Journal an exclusive advance look at its 225-page planning document, which lays out its hopes for everything from alternative energy generation (photovoltaics will be integrated into the glass canopies) to larger issues affecting the area (like combating sea level rise through major infrastructure improvements).
Louise Mozingo, chair of the landscape architecture and environmental planning and urban design department at U.C. Berkeley, called the proposal “utopian.”
“They’re absolutely trying to remake a whole district in a city,” Mozingo, who studies tech campuses. “There’s no other company that’s ever tried to do this. That’s a very ambitious vision.”
The tremendous scale is possible only because Google, with $64.4 billion in liquid assets, has assembled the vast majority of privately owned land in North Bayshore, a 500-acre enclave north of Highway 101 on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. About 35 percent, or 19,000, of Google’s 53,700 workers now work in what is affectionately called the Googleplex, the company said at a recent city council meeting.