July 14, 2016
Google and LinkedIn reach agreement on enormous office swap 0
In March, we reported on the stumbling blocks faced by Google in its plans to create a vast new home for itself in Silicon Valley, not least resistance from local authorities in California and the problems associated with neighbouring land owned by LinkedIn. Now, according to a report in the Silicon Valley Business Journal, it appears the noisy neighbours have come to a deal to swap large chunks of real estate. According to the report, Google will acquire all of LinkedIn’s existing land in the Mountain View area, which consists of LinkedIn’s existing 370,000-square-feet headquarters and eight acres of land LinkedIn had set aside for turning into new office space. LinkedIn will now relocate its headquarters to four office buildings in the area currently owned by Google to create a new 750,000 sq. ft. portfolio. The deal represents a win-win for both parties with LinkedIn doubling its existing space without the costly need to build new offices, while Google finally gets the chance to realise its dream of building the quirky campus designed by Heatherwick Studio and Bjarke Ingels.
May 6, 2016
Can building design presage the decline of the world’s tech giants?
by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Comment, Technology, Workplace design
At the movies, buildings are often used to denote hubris. The ambitions and egos of Charles Foster Kane and Scarface are embodied in the pleasure domes and gilded cages they erect to themselves and their achievements. Of course, the day they move in is the day things invariably go badly wrong. In the real world too, monstrous edifices have often presaged a crash. The UK’s most ambitious and much talked about office building at the turn of the Millennium was British Airways’ Waterside, completed in 1998, just a year after Margaret Thatcher famously objected to the firm’s new modern tailfin designs by draping them with a hankie and three years before BA had to drop its ‘World’s Favourite Airline’ strapline because by then it was Lufthansa. Nowadays BA isn’t even the UK’s favourite airline, but Waterside remains a symbol of its era, albeit one that continues to influence the way we perceive building design.
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