Letter from Silicon Valley: inside the finest tech workspaces
You’d be hard-pressed to find a cubicle in a typical Silicon Valley office. Dropbox has Lego and a music room (complete with a grand piano), Airbnb has its green living wall and War Room, Twitter has foosball tables and yoga studios, and Github has its speakeasy and Oval Office replica.
But it’s not just child’s play, as evidenced by the growing number of Silicon Valley companies enlisting architecture's biggest names to dream up workspaces that match the titanic creative ambitions of its employees.
Facebook, for example, opened its new Menlo Park headquarters earlier this year: a 430,000 sq ft space designed by Frank Gehry, and billed as the largest open plan office in the world. The building is topped with a nine-acre green roof, with a walking trail and plenty of places where employees are encouraged to work, while taking advantage of California’s pleasant climate.
Elsewhere in the Valley, Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs personally tapped Norman Foster for the tech giant’s new campus, currently in the works on a staggering 2.8 million sq ft site. Once complete, it will house up to 13,000 employees in a colossal ring-shaped structure - that’s since been dubbed the ‘Spaceship Campus’ - surrounding a vast outdoor park.
Not to be outdone, Google has turned to two high-profile names for its forthcoming Mountain View campus: British designer Thomas Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingels of Danish firm BIG. In a radical shift from immoveable concrete buildings, the company will create a modular campus using ‘lightweight block-like structures’. The flexible site will be capped with large, translucent canopies that control the interior climate while letting in light and air, and will house boast shops, restaurants, cafés and bike paths.
These workplaces become autonomous communities in themselves, where practically every need, desire and whim of staff are catered for (does anyone actually ever leave the Google campus, or its free, gourmet cafeteria for that matter?). It’s these utopic environments that fuel the creativity behind some of the most memorable and game-changing products today.
From start-ups to Goliaths, there’s no shortage of tech offices that encourage a healthy balance of work and play. Here, we take a tour of the finest workspaces in Silicon Valley.
Samsung: Completed this September, Samsung’s new North American headquarters by NBBJ is the latest addition to Silicon Valley’s top crop of workspaces. Situated on the corner of a prominent street in San Jose’s tech hub, the project comprises two adjacent 10-story towers unified by an outer skin and connected by a series of bridges.
Facebook: Completed in April this year, Facebook’s Frank Gehry-designed HQ covers a sprawling 430,000 sq ft and is the largest open plan office in the world. Transparency is key here, where employees can almost all the way down the building, in an environment that fosters open communication and collaboration.
Uber: Silicon Valley’s go-to design firm Studio O+A - which counts Facebook, Yelp, AOL and Evernote among its clients – conceived taxi app Uber’s elegant space, notable for its subdued palette (unusual for most tech firms) and rich materials palette (think onyx glass, oxidised maple, copper and marble).
Cisco: Sunken seating preserves long sightlines; yurts, cabanas and phone rooms offer privacy; and informal lounges encourage colleagues to socialise with each other. Furniture by Herman Miller, Knoll and Artek and lighting by Muuto, Flos and Lindsey Adelman complete the vibrant space.
Skype: The company sought to conceive a top-notch office that would allow it compete for the best talent Silicon Valley had to offer. According to its designers, local firm Blitz, the distinct spaces facilitate three different types of working: collaboration, contemplation and concentration, brought to life by a simple palette and restrained use of finishes.
Dropbox: Geremia Design adds, ‘The creation of office lounges were an important part of our design’, while a collaboration with a local designer led to the creation of innovative LED lighting in the office, rather than the traditional fluorescent lights found in most workspaces
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