Why Are Google and Apple Building Campuses Like Hippie Communes?

June 6, 2016 5:00 am
(Foster+Partners)
(Foster+Partners)

For all the talk of ‘disruption’ coming out of Silicon Valley, one thing that has tended to remain stubbornly stuck in the past is tech companies’ architecture. Many of today’s most innovative companies are housed in deadly dull, boxy and glassy suburban campuses: Google lives in the rehabbed buildings once occupied by Silicon Graphics, Facebook in a laboratory from the 1960s. Though the interiors might have advanced lighting systems, state-of-the-art fitness facilities and cafeterias serving farm-to-table fare, the exteriors—flat, unarticulated facades; ribbon windows; hard right angles—could come from any suburban office corridor anywhere in the country, and from any moment in the past half-century.”

Read the full story on the ’60s-design-inspired techie campuses here. Take a look at some of Google’s and Apple’s designs below.

(BIG and Heatherwick Studio)
(BIG and Heatherwick Studio)
(BIG and Heatherwick Studio)
(BIG and Heatherwick Studio)
(Foster+Partners)
(Foster+Partners)
(Foster+Partners)
(Foster+Partners)

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