Google Bay View: Re-imagining the workplace

The design for Google’s first ever purpose-built headquarters is rooted in a single question: how can you make the office more human? 

Created by Heatherwick Studio and BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), the new campus – launched today – spans two sites in Mountain View, California: Bay View and Charleston East. Bay View, the first phase to be completed, features three of the most sustainable workplace buildings in the world and establishes a 17.3 acre park and wetlands reserve.

Below ground, the project has the largest geothermal pile system in North America. Above ground, under the Californian sun, the tent-like enclosures are made of waves of dragon-scale photovoltaic tiles, which turn energy generation into a spectacular design feature.

The typical tech headquarters in Silicon Valley is a low-rise fortress surrounded by parking. But this design proposes a new, greener, more flexible model for the workplace, in tune with Google’s values and ambitions. Inspired by the long-span structure of a 1930s airship hangar next to the Bay View campus, the design solution has three components. First, a lightweight, power-generating canopy. Second, under this shelter, a ‘village’ of different functions, with basement-level infrastructure. Finally, the site itself, which reconnects the workplace with the Californian landscape.

The building’s lateral connectivity follows Google’s core ethos, “focus on the user and all else will follow.” Everyone works together, under the same sky, instead of in cramped floors stacked above a spacious office lobby for guests.

The resulting design is a very simple two-level structure: a mat of interconnected ‘tables’, joined together by accessible ramps, with the tables acting as the roof of a town-like arrangement of ancillary spaces, such as meeting areas, bathrooms, cafés, gym and other amenities. In this way, the campus becomes a giant canopy, human-centred, filled with life and prompting people to connect and experiment. 

To give each area a sense of individuality, the design team drew on core urban planning principles. Each table is conceived as a neighbourhood for 40 to 80 people and is organised around its own distinctive courtyard incorporating works of art. As in a city, a hierarchy of circulation routes connects these neighbourhoods, from main avenues to small laneways.

The canopy itself is a lightweight but rigid catenary structure. Between the columns, the tension in the structure is adjusted, allowing the enclosure to peel back and create wave-like clerestories. Even at the heart of the building, in the centre of its floor plate, there is still a connection with the natural world. Careful analysis and modelling determined the ideal balance between solid and glazed areas. The aim was to give the sense of working in the open air, while creating optimal lighting, temperature, acoustic and air quality conditions. And for the times when teams need to work in a quiet, focused space, there are demountable prefabricated units.

The project delivers a pioneering approach to the large-scale use of integrated photovoltaics. The solid areas are clad in dragon-scale tiles which will help power Bay View on carbon-free energy 90% of the time. On the windows, an automated system of blinds tracks the path of the sun to eliminate glare. And the high-performance canopy integrates rainwater harvesting as part of a water positive strategy that puts Bay View on track to achieve ‘Water Petal’ certification in the International Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge.

One of the most significant impacts of the project has also been the restoration of meadow, woodland and scrubland wildlife habitats. It establishes new willow groves, which had almost entirely disappeared from the South Bay area. Set these achievements alongside the largest geothermal pile system in North America – with pipes that stretch almost 100 miles and cover a surface area equal to 12 American football fields – and it becomes clear how this campus can lay claim to be one of the greenest of its kind in the world.

Workspace design was already moving far beyond conventional notions of efficiency before the catastrophe of Covid. Now it is grappling with ideas about how to trigger people’s imagination and the emotional engagement of one team with another and with the wider purpose of the business.

The campus at Bay View illustrates how we start creating a whole different atmosphere of work.