GEHRY DOES FACEBOOK--Palo Alto-based Facebook announced Friday that icon architect Frank Gehry will design the social media’s giant newest corporate campus in nearby Menlo Park, CA. The project will break ground in 2013 and is designed to fit 2,800 employees.
Facebook’s face and founder Mark Zuckerberg posted the following on his page over the weekend: “…I'm excited to work with Frank Gehry to design our new campus. The idea is to make the perfect engineering space: one giant room that fits thousands of people, all close enough to collaborate together. It will be the largest open floor plan in the world, but it will also have plenty of private, quiet spaces as well. The roof of the building will be a park that blends into the community with a long walking trail, a field and lots of places to sit. From the outside it will appear as if you're looking at a hill in nature. — with Frank Gehry…”
The task of highlighting a few of the new campus’s planned amenities went to the company’s environmental design manager Everett Katigbak, who also posted hours: “…At every step of planning the new building, Frank has taken into account our engineering culture. It will be a large, one room building that somewhat resembles a warehouse. Just like we do now, everyone will sit out in the open with desks that can be quickly shuffled around as teams form and break apart around projects. There will be cafes and lots of micro-kitchens with snacks so that you never have to go hungry. And we’ll fill the building with break-away spaces with couches and whiteboards to make getting away from your desk easy.
“We’ve paid just as much attention to the outside as well. The exterior takes into account the local architecture so that it fits in well with its surroundings. We’re planting a ton of trees on the grounds and more on the rooftop garden that spans the entire building. The raw, unfinished look of our buildings means we can construct them quickly and with a big emphasis on being eco-friendly. Of course, we’ll maintain our current campus and use an underground tunnel to connect the two,” said Katigbak.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-menlo-park/unveiling-our-campus-expansion/408653002515369
More info: Background on recent facebook real estate moves go to Time Magazine’s recent Techland article on the facebook current Silicon Valley campus. http://techland.time.com/2012/08/06/facebook-headquarters/
Captions:
Top: Frank Gehry (left) with Mark Zuckerberg examining the model of the social media giant’s next big campus. Photos via facebook.
Lower: Artist’s rendering of the new facebook campus, which will have a tunnel underneath the nearby Bayshore freeway (Highway 101) that will join the new and old facebook corporate sites.
No comments:
Post a Comment