Archinect - News

Google scraps $15 billion Silicon Valley development deal with Lendlease

2023-11-06T12:28:00-05:00

Google has scrapped a $15 billion development deal that would have benefitted California’s Silicon Valley with new modern office parks, affordable housing, and mixed-use districts, according to reports published by CNN and Reuters late Friday.

The deals struck with Australian multinational Lendlease cover planned developments in and around Santa Clara County, California, including Sunnyvale and three others in San Jose and Mountain View. Google had previously announced its plans to reduce its company size by about 6% at the beginning of the year.

Both Lendlease and Google had released statements expressing their continued pursuit of the projects in April when the San Jose Downtown West development’s start of construction was put on hold indefinitely. Lendlease now says the four-year-old deal is no longer “mutually beneficial given current market conditions.”

The news strikes a major blow to the faltering...

NASA’s $2 billion Berkeley Space Center proposal unveiled

2023-10-17T11:48:00-04:00

Details have been revealed on the design of the $2 billion Berkeley Space Center at the NASA Research Park in the Bay Area of California. A joint venture between SKS Partners and UC Berkeley, in collaboration with HOK and Field Operations, the 36-acre hub will be dedicated to “identifying, incubating, and launching technological breakthroughs across a diverse set of fields including astronautics, quantum computing, climate studies, and the social sciences.”

Image courtesy: SKS Partners / UC Berkeley / HOK / Field Operations

Located within NASA’s Ames Research Center, the development will include 1.4 million square feet of office and R&D space, including wet and dry labs, as well as conference space, academic facilities, and retail amenities. 18 acres of open space are planned, including outdoor working spaces and a central green area.

Image courtesy: SKS Partners / UC Berkeley / HOK / Field Operations

Among the environmental features to be incorporated in the scheme are low-carbon ene...

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann is getting into the housing market with a new startup

2022-08-16T18:49:00-04:00

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann is once again making waves with the announcement of a new startup called Flow that’s being funded by early Airbnb investors Andreessen Horowitz and is promoting itself as a real estate startup that aims to revolutionize the residential housing industry.

The $350 million deal is said to be the largest in the Silicon Valley fund’s 13-year history and brings Flow’s initial evaluation to exactly $1 billion, a pittance when compared to the $47 billion figure WeWork received in 2019 thanks to SoftBank. The company’s operation will officially begin next year, according to the New York Times’ DealBook page, which first reported the news late Monday.

“We love seeing repeat-founders build on past successes by growing from lessons learned," Marc Andreessen stated, referring to Neumann's well-documented past. “The successes and lessons are plenty.”

Neumann has repo...

$800-a-month sleeping pods? One company thinks they are the solution to California’s housing crisis

2022-05-20T18:41:00-04:00

A new Silicon Valley startup is taking the charge put forth by the recent expansion of ADUs and other non-traditional forms of accommodation in the uphill battle to provide affordable housing to the millions of Californians struggling to find a way forward.

Business Insider recently took a closeup look at the San Francisco-based Brownstone Shared Housing, an eight-month-old company co-founded by former state auditors James Stallworth and Christina Lennox, that has designed a new stackable sleeping pod currently being modeled within single-family homes in Bakersfield and Palo Alto.

Similar to the sleeping capsules common to urban Japanese hotels and resorts, the four-foot-tall spaces can be scaled to hold up to 14 people and are being marketed by the company as an alternative to the high-rent, low-availability housing situation typical in the areas adjacent to Stanford University.

Google's BIG + Heatherwick-designed Bay View HQ campus opens

2022-05-17T18:55:00-04:00

Google has announced the opening of its new Bay View campus in Mountain View, California, with the neighboring Charleston East project in its final phase of construction. Together, they form the latest additions to Google's headquarters.

Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy of Google

The web giant celebrates the first time it led the concept and construction of one of its own major campuses, boasting an extensive list of human-centered, sustainable features.

According to Google's project announcement, Bay View is an all-electric, net-water-positive facility with the largest geothermal installation in North America. Both projects report being the largest buildings in the world to pursue LEED-NC v4 Platinum and the largest to pursue elements of the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) Living Building Challenge (LBC) Petal Certification.

Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy of Google

Designed in collaboration with Bjarke Ingels Group and Heatherwick Studio, the campus officially broke ground in 2...

Kengo Kuma hopes to 'blur the line' between outdoor activity and office work in San Jose

2022-05-12T13:45:00-04:00

Kengo Kuma and Associates has unveiled plans for a new biophilia-laden office complex in downtown San Jose, California.

Under the monicker “Park Habitat,” the massive new 1.3-million-square-foot development offers 20 stories of office and retail spaces which are beset by a network of internal and external parks and gardens.

In a new manifesto published by the group Westbank Campus, the international development group’s founder Ian Gillespie outlined his reasoning for choosing the influential Japanese architect for a design whose scope purportedly entails a focus on user wellness and local environment.

Previously on Archinect: BIG, Kengo Kuma, and Studio Gang tapped for Westbank's San Jose masterplan

“I chose Kengo for a very deliberate reason: Kuma-San has risen to the pinnacle of his profession by blurring the lines between nature and the built environment. His practice is dedicated to making buildings less definitive or solid and more ephemeral. In essence, creating a particular co...

People over mountain lions; California town is dropping its attempt to avert the state’s new housing laws

2022-02-09T10:51:00-05:00

Following four days of widespread scorn after attempting to block a new state law allowing duplexes on single-family lots by declaring itself a “mountain-lion habitat,” the wealthy Silicon Valley enclave of Woodside has backed down. At the end of a town emergency Town Council meeting Sunday night, almost all of which was held in closed session to discuss potential litigation, city officials announced they would begin accepting applications for new duplexes.

Woodside’s tired attempt at circumventing two of the most important and proactive laws in favor of affordable housing in recent memory drew an incredible amount of ire online before being withdrawn Sunday night following a letter from Attorney General Rob Bonta warning the town that “there is no valid basis” to its broadly disproven claims as an animal sanctuary.

The scheme was first exposed in a local newspaper and then picked up by the LA Times in addition to several additional national outlets, which amplified the pressure on the town. Woodside is an 11-square-mile showcase for luxury architecture, frequently listing noteworthy real estate for top-of-market prices while playing host to the dream homes of tech titans like Google CEO Larry Ellison, whose 23-acre replica Japanese emperor’s palace complex was completed in 1999 at a cost of $200 million (or about $340 million today).

An affluent California town is going to ridiculous lengths to get around affordable housing regulation

2022-02-04T18:00:00-05:00

The well-heeled Silicon Valley suburb of Woodside has come up with a novel way to block plans that would potentially bring in more affordable housing: Declare itself Cougar Town. Last week, officials in the enclave of 5,500 people announced that all of Woodside was exempt from a new state housing law that allows for duplex development on single-family home lots. The reason? The entire town is habitat for potentially endangered mountain lions.

The move is potentially foreshadowing of the ways in which local governments in California will, as predicted before Governor Gavin Newsome signed S.B. 9 into law in September, attempt to brush off the state’s efforts to mandate zoning that would engender an increase in multi-family residential units and affordable housing.

Critics say the pushback stems from the age-old notion of California living as an ever-expanding idyll of freeway-connected suburbs filled with single-family homes that has become outdated and regressive under the modern economy, pushing many to leave the state for greener pastures. The mountain lion population in Woodside constitutes in their eyes an egregious attempt to use wildlife as a shield in the town leadership’s preservation schemes.

“Don’t believe for a second that this is driven by mountain lion habitat concerns,” former town council member Daniel Yost told the LA Times. “It is not. It is resistance by some members of the Town Council to do our fair ...

Clive Wilkinson says he regrets the role he played in the Googleplex's design

2022-01-24T17:35:00-05:00

For more than three decades, Clive Wilkinson has been among the most sought-after office designers in the world. He has planned spaces for the likes of Microsoft, Disney, Intuit and other companies seeking unorthodox approaches to work life. But he now has regrets about what is perhaps his most famous work: Googleplex, the tech giant's posh headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Wilkinson’s statements offer a rebuke to the Silicon Valley culture he played a role in pioneering and now deems to be "fundamentally unhealthy." The $1 billion office complex in Mountain View, California designed by STUDIOS Architecture with interiors by Wilkinson is serviced by a secretive $250 million transportation network and is famous for its plush employee perks that Wilkinson now says he regrets.

"This notion that you can provide everything that would support a worker's life on campus might appear to be extremely generous and supportive," he told NPR’s Bobby Allyn. "But it also has a whole range of potentially negative impacts. Work-life balance cannot be achieved by spending all your life on a work campus. It's not real. It's not really engaging with the world in the way most people do. It also drains the immediate neighborhoods of being able to have a commercial reality."

Relisten to Archinect's 2016 podcast interview with Clive Wilkinson

Wilkinson also stated that he do...

BIG, Kengo Kuma, and Studio Gang tapped for Westbank's San Jose masterplan

2021-05-06T11:42:00-04:00

Vancouver-based developer Westbank has unveiled plans for a collection of mixed-use projects in downtown San Jose, California. The development will feature six new or renovated buildings by leading architects including Kengo Kuma and Associates, Bjarke Ingels Group, Studio Gang, James K.M. Cheng Architects, and WRNS Studio. The buildings within the Silicon Valley initiative will combine to deliver 700 new residences and 5 million square feet of workspace, in what Westbank sees as an effort to “inspire the next generation of innovators by creating a healthier, more beautiful community.”

While blending a variety of architectural forms, the six projects are linked by an effort to respond to the climate crisis, with each building targeting deep carbon reductions for both operational and embodied carbon. “What we are proposing is a collection of net zero life cycle carbon buildings adjacent to inspiring residential,” says Westbank. “We propose workspace that merges nature and office spac...

SMAR Architecture Studio's design proposal wins Silicon Valley landmark competition

2021-03-26T20:40:00-04:00

After several rounds of jury reviews, Silicon Valley may have found its new landmark. The winning proposal is said to "symbolize people standing and working together." On March 25th, Fernando Jerez and Belén Pérez de Juan of SMAR Architecture Studio were announced as winners of the competition for their proposal "Breeze of Innovation."

In 2019 the San José Light Tower Corporation launched the Urban Confluence Silicon Valley competition. The international competition invited artists, architects, urban planners, landscape architects, students, designers, and anyone with a passion for place-making to submit ideas for creating an iconic landmark project to enhance community life in San José, California. In September 2020, the competition's jury announced its three finalists: "Breeze of Innovation" by SMAR Architecture Studio, "Welcome to Wonderland" by SCI-Arc M.Arch I student Rish Saito and the "Nebula Tower" by Qinrong Lui and Ruize Li.

Breeze of Innovation - "The Structure has big ...

Google reveals more details for Downtown West San Jose project

2020-10-12T14:24:00-04:00

Google unveiled on Wednesday its most detailed vision yet for a transit-oriented neighborhood in downtown San Jose [...] Google’s village would add 7.3 million square feet of offices, 4,000 homes, shops, restaurants, a hotel, 10 parks, cultural and entertainment hubs, and immersive and interactive educational elements near downtown San Jose’s Diridon train hub.

Google's ambitious 80-acre, transit-oriented Downtown West plan first appeared on Archinect in October 2019 and involves a number of prominent architecture and urban design firms, including Kohn Pedersen Fox (related), Heatherwick Studio, Grimshaw Architects, SHoP Architects, Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), and SITELAB urban studio.

More details can be found on the Downtown West project website and San Jose's Planning Division.

3 competition finalists propose designs for a new landmark in Silicon Valley

2020-09-29T19:26:00-04:00

As the largest city in the Silicon Valley, San Jose yearned for a physical structure that would help "define the identity and spirit of this extraordinary region" as explained in the competition's brief. Inspired by the original San Jose Electric Light Tower that stood 1881 to 1915, the San José Light Tower Corporation led an open call inviting architects, landscape architects, urban planners, artists, students, etc. to submit proposal ideas for the city.

Part of the competition brief asked for a creative landmark design that encapsulates a net-zero approach, "dramatic lighting" incorporated into the design, and an "impressive physical presence." The competition's jury consisted of architects, planners, landscape architects such as Walter Hood of Hood Design Studio, Julia Czerniak, Associate Dean, and architecture professor Syracuse University, Jerry Van Eyck of !melk, among others. After launching the competition in 2019, 963 design ideas from 72 countries were submitted.

The jury...

Google forges ahead with new office project in the Bay Area

2020-09-04T16:03:00-04:00

Just because prominent technology companies, including Twitter, Amazon, Apple, and others, have announced plans to extend work from home policies into 2022 and beyond, it doesn't mean they aren't planning for a return to the office somewhere down the line.

A case in point is Google, which continues to make significant investments in office projects around the country despite the doom-and-gloom predictions for office environments that shaped by media coverage in recent months.

The internet giant, along with Amazon, is currently pushing ahead with new leases in New York City, for example, in addition to pursuing a collection of ground-up developments in the Bay Area. The company's new Mountain View headquarters, designed by Heatherwick Studio and BIG, is currently under construction. While an even larger and more ambitious new proposal crafted in collaboration with developer LendLease, SERA Architects, Hassell and Kristen Hall City Design was announced earlier this week.

The propose...

Katerra stumbles as it expands overseas

2019-12-26T16:00:00-05:00

Katerra has failed to complete roughly a dozen projects and could only name one that was delivered on time. All the while, logistical and technology-based issues have chipped away at the company’s image as a revolutionary tech startup. Some clients have ended their relationship with the firm. Other clients, however, are tied to Katerra’s executives, and have drummed up business for the company—a similar arrangement used by WeWork executives, which became a concern for some investors

The Real Deal takes an investigative look at some of the recent business dealings and project announcements from Katerra. The vertically integrated construction and modular building components start-up is facing renewed media and financial scrutiny following the recently announced closure of its first fabrication plant in Phoenix, Arizona. Katerra recently opened a new 270,000-square-foot CLT factory in Spokane, Washington.

The company also recently expanded its project offerings in Saudi Arabia and India, the former of which is the biggest backer of Japanese technology start-up investor Softbank’s Vision Fund, a financial vehicle that backed WeWork, Compass, and Uber, three highly valued ventures that all stumbled in 2019.

SmithGroup prototypes sleek pod that doubles as public toilet, retail space, and more

2019-08-31T15:00:00-04:00

The firm's entry to the San Francisco Department of Public Works' (DPW) design competition calling for "the conceptualization of industrial art that would double as toilets," was selected as the winner.

Courtesy of SmithGroup

The design, called AmeniTREES, is a multi-functional kit of parts capable of transforming based on its needed use. They can be used for advertising, restrooms, and even retail space.

Image courtesy of SmithGroup

The Silicon Valley needs a new landmark. Submit your ideas to for the Urban Confluence Silicon Valley Ideas Competition!

2019-08-12T13:15:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by the Urban Confluence Silicon Valley

UPDATE: Urban Confluence Silicon Valley has extended the entry deadline to July 1, 2020.

San José Light Tower Corporation invites visionaries, place-makers, architects, artists, designers, students, and dreamers to help define the identity and spirit of this extraordinary region, to reflect the breathless sense of possibility we all feel, and to propel that influence and hope into a world-class landmark.

We want to bring to built life the visceral feeling of vibrant progress that threads its way through our beloved environment, while at the same time protecting the existing landscape in the midst of urban sprawl.

Call for Entries!
The San José Light Tower Corporation announces the launch of Urban Confluence Silicon Valley (The Competition), an international open ideas competition. Artists, architects, urban planners, landscape architects, students, designers, engineers, and anyone with a passion for place-making is inv...

The complicated afterlife of spent data servers

2019-07-30T15:13:00-04:00

Investment in cloud infrastructure has surged since 2015, and the market for data-center equipment is expected to grow at an average annualized rate of roughly 16% this year and next, according to Citigroup Inc. Cloud servers, though, typically have a lifespan of only about three years, according to experts, meaning that some of the earliest equipment already has passed its use-by date.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the anticipated market for scrap metal and other components used to make cloud computing infrastructure.

As the cloud computing era gets underway globally, efforts to recycle the short-lived data servers that power the cloud have been complicated by privacy and sustainability concerns. Recycling policies vary by manufacturers, while a lack of coordination and technology industry secrecy stifles efforts to solidify a coordinated approach for the estimated 2 metric tons of obsolete equipment generated by cloud computing, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A 2017 report from the United Nations University, the International Telecommunication Union, and the International Solid Waste Association reads: “Although cloud-computing trends can lead to fewer devices because all services can be accessed from one device, more cloud computing also means more data centers and more e-waste."

Tech companies are taking over L.A.

2019-07-19T16:16:00-04:00

The Los Angeles office market has been on the upswing since 2013 and showed no sign of stalling in the second quarter as tech and entertainment firms continue to expand into new space. Developers are responding to the demand by building new offices that are often rented long before they are completed, which was unusual during previous real estate cycles when tenants typically waited to see finished buildings before making commitments.

The tech industry's expansion into the Los Angeles office market continues unabated, The Los Angeles Times reports.

In recent months, Los Angeles has grown to become home to the third-largest tech workforce on the west coast, with San Francisco and Seattle still far in the lead. The expansion, according to The Los Angeles Times, is putting pressure on the city's office market, even as a collection of new office developments and expansions come online.

In 2011, for example, Google moved into the Frank Gehry-designed Binoculars Building in L.A.'s Venice neighborhood.

An influx of new tech millionaires further balloons Silicon Valley's housing crisis

2019-03-29T15:50:00-04:00

As the tech companies Uber, Airbnb, Lyft and Pinterest prepare to go public, thousands more instant millionaires are expected to flood the market in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. All the while, the middle class and working poor are scrambling for shelter.

Copenhagen plans nine artificial islands in hopes to be the next 'Silicon Valley'

2019-01-24T18:49:00-05:00

In the hopes of becoming the next Silicon Valley, Denmark is embarking on a massive land reclamation project that involves the creation of nine new islands to the south of Copenhagen. Designed by the Danish office Urban Power, the Holmene project will create 3.1 million square meters of land to serve as a new business and infrastructure district for tech companies and green industries. The company expects the expansion to bring 380 new businesses and 12,000 jobs.

Amid a housing and office shortage, the government has been increasingly looking to land reclamation as a potential solution aimed at addressing the city's development and growth. Back in October, for instance, the city of Copenhagen announced a $3 billion plan to build another island, to be named Lynetteholmen, for 35,000 people in order to help alleviate its housing shortage.

Credit: Urban Power.

Both projects, in addition to growing space for business and more people, will help Copenhagen address issues of climate change...

California-based construction start-up Katerra valued at more than $4bn with help from Japan's SoftBank

2019-01-16T14:38:00-05:00

In just four years, the Silicon Valley start-up Katerra has grown from a sizable construction firm to one of the industry's biggest disrupters. Now, with support from one of the tech industry's biggest investors, the California-based construction company has announced plans for another investment round that will have it valued at more than $4 billion.

SoftBank, the billion dollar venture capital firm helping to bankroll companies such as Uber, WeWork and the indoor farming start-up Plenty, is expected to lead the $700 million round of financing for Katerra. This comes less than a year after the Japanese holdings company invested a prior $865 million into the company.

In Katerra, SoftBank is backing a revolutionary approach that promises to redefine the $12 trillion construction industry. The company's aim is to make the building construction process cheaper and more efficient and while Katerra is not unique in this quest, it is remarkable for its end-to-end design-build process whi...

From concept to development, wHY Architecture's youth arts center in East Palo Alto folds the community into the building process

2018-10-10T14:43:00-04:00

wHY Architecture's innovative partnership with EpaCenterArts has broken ground in East Palo Alto, coinciding with a community stakeholder event to celebrate the occasion on Saturday, October 13th.

The planned $50 million 21,000-square-foot EpaCenterArts, the construction for which began last month, will host an arts, design and music center for youth in the area. As one of the go-to designers for art spaces, Kulapat Yantrasast and his firm, which is currently working on the Asian Art Museum in nearby San Francisco, was a natural choice for the foundation.

Epacenter; Image by wHY + Luxingon.

Positioned at the center of Silicon Valley, East Palo Alto has struggled to maintain levels of equity among its residents as the region's booming tech economy continues to raise rents and home values. The youth center, funded by John & Marcia Goldman Foundation, is the result of a grassroots effort to address these external pressures by creating something for the community.

In response, Yantrasa...

Startup Katerra wants to revolutionize the construction industry

2018-06-27T15:18:00-04:00

A Menlo Park company called Katerra announced that it had acquired Michael Green Architecture, a 25-person architecture firm in Vancouver, British Columbia. On June 12, the company revealed that it had bought another, larger architecture firm, Atlanta-based Lord Aeck Sargent. This comes five months after Katerra raised $865 million in venture capital from funders led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which has also invested heavily in the co-working startup WeWork.

Startup Katerra looks to revolutionize the construction industry through streamlining the entire process with their design-build model. The company has acquired Michael Green Architecture, known for designing tall wood buildings, and Lord Aeck Sargent.

With these two firms obtained, Katerra will now consolidate by designing and building its products in house. Michael Green Architecture's influence can be seen as Katerra is developing a catalog of mass timber products for residential and commercial building projects. Uniquely Katerra has also created a system to guarantee price early on, a rarity in the industry.

Facebook plans to build their own 59-acre housing development in Silicon Valley

2018-04-06T18:22:00-04:00

Facebook is testing the proposition: Do people love tech companies so much they will live inside of them? When the project was announced last summer, critics dubbed it Facebookville or, in tribute to company co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zucktown. [...] If Facebook’s image is permanently sullied by the furor over Cambridge Analytica, the data firm hired by President Trump’s 2016 election campaign, Zucktown will falter before it is finished.

Like Google's Sidewalk Labs for Toronto and Bill Gates' proposed smart city in Arizona, Facebook is working to make their own housing development, Willow Village, a living reality in Silicon Valley. Nicknamed “Zucktown” and “Facebookville” by critics, the project will occupy a 59-acre site in between the gentrified Menlo Park neighborhood and East Palo Alto. The New York Times reports that Willow Village will offer 1,500 apartments, and Facebook made an agreement with Menlo Park to offer 225 of the units at below-market rates.

“It is a project with many precedents in American history, quite a few of them cautionary tales about what happens when a powerful corporation takes control of civic life,” The New York Times article states.

Will cities themselves become Silicon Valley's Biggest Start-Up?

2018-02-26T14:18:00-05:00

In the maddening gap between how this place functions and how inventors and engineers here think it should, many have become enamored with the same idea: What if the people who build circuits and social networks could build cities, too? Wholly new places, designed from scratch and freed from broken policies.

In Emily Badger's latest piece for the Upshot, she investigates the Tech Industry's newest sector of disruption, the City. From Alphabet company's proposal for Sidewalk Labs in Toronto to a proposed smart city in Arizona, Silicon Valley is looking to build urban utopias of their own. While the idea has received strong negative feedback, particularly from urban planners and architects who believe the tech industry should stay within its lanes, Badger wonders if approaching the problems modern cities are facing through a tabula rasa mindset might be beneficial.

Google's Sunnyvale plans include two building by Bjarke Ingels Group

2018-01-08T15:16:00-05:00

Google on Wednesday unveiled its plans for a striking new development in Sunnyvale’s Moffett Park, where thousands of the company’s employees could work in more than 1 million square feet of offices. The search giant filed a proposal with Sunnyvale city officials late Wednesday for a two-building, 1.04 million square foot project, called Caribbean, that would be large enough to accommodate 4,500 Google workers.

Google's massive expansion plan in Sunnyvale include two buildings designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). Renderings of the new project show a complex named the Caribbean featuring long inclines allowing employees to walk, bike, or skate to any level of the building. Located on Caribbean Drive, these two buildings would make up just a piece of the company's total $1 billion purchase of about 50 properties in Sunnyvale.

Mark Golan, chief operating officer of Google’s global real estate investments & development unit, stated during an interview, "Google has made a significant investment in Sunnyvale... Our intent would be to develop that out over time." While Google has big plans for it's new complex, the site is not projected to be up and running with employees until at least 2021.

With enough sites purchased by google, there is a good chance housing could be developed as well as offices. Golan revealed, “A new mixed-use community where you have live-work capabilities, makes a lot o...

Apple Campus will open its doors to the public next week for iPhone 8 launch

2017-09-05T15:41:00-04:00

While the new Apple Campus still remains incomplete, Apple is moving forward with hosting the launch of their new iPhone 8 on site. The company sent out a media invite last Thursday with the tagline, "Let's meet at our place," confirming the location of the event. It will be the first time Apple has allowed large numbers of outsiders to visit the campus.

Main campus, still incomplete. YouTube/Duncan Sinfield

The reveal coincides with the 10th anniversary of the first iPhone, launched in 2007. Rumored features include a 3D camera that can unlock the device using facial recognition, no more home button, wireless charging, OLED display technology with greater power efficiency, improved dual-lens camera, and an almost $1,000 price tag.

Steve Jobs Theater. YouTube/Duncan Sinfield

The keynote speeches will be held at the Steve Jobs Theater, an 1,000 seat below ground auditorium that sits on top of the hill overlooking the main building. Visitors enter through a 20-foot-tall glass cylinder ...

Facebook and OMA New York to collaborate on mixed-use masterplan in Menlo Park

2017-07-07T13:09:00-04:00

Facebook announced today that it has partnered with OMA to design the masterplan for Willow Campus, a mixed-use neighborhood adjacent to their existing headquarters in Menlo Park.

"The first official step will be the filing of our plan with Menlo Park in July 2017. We will begin more formal conversations with local government officials and community organizations over the course of the review process, which we expect to last approximately two years."—writes John Tenales, VP Global Facilities and Real Estate. "We envision construction will follow in phases, with the first to include the grocery, retail, housing and office completed in early 2021, and subsequent phases will take two years each to complete."

Facebook also plans on building 1,500 units of housing on the campus, 15% of which will be offered at below market rates to mitigate traffic impacts from growth. "These efforts complement our ongoing work to address the issue, including the Catalyst Housing Fund for affordable ho...

Silicon Valley is creating a homeless crisis in rural California

2017-04-13T12:40:00-04:00

California’s Central Valley is best known for supplying nearly 25% of the country’s food, including 40% of the fruit and nuts consumed each year. Yet today, backcountry places such as Patterson, population 22,000, are experiencing an increase in homelessness that can be traced, in part, to an unlikely sounding source: Silicon Valley.

As home prices rise staggeringly high in Silicon Valley and San Jose, aspiring homeowners have increasingly headed inland to the agricultural regions of the Central Valley, which lie alongside the I-5. In towns like Patterson, rents have risen from $900 to $1,600 over three years, forcing more and more people out of homes and into the street. According to the last census, in the county at large, there are 1,400 homeless people with nearly 18,000 at threat of becoming homeless.