Archinect - News

Is the architectural design causing serious Wi-Fi issues at Google's new Bay View headquarters?

2024-03-26T17:28:00-04:00

Google has not publicly disclosed the reasons for the Wi-Fi problems, but workers say the 600,000-square-foot building’s swooping, wave-like rooftop swallows broadband like the Bermuda Triangle. [...] But, a Google spokeswoman acknowledged, "we’ve had Wi-Fi connectivity issues in Bay View." She said Google "made several improvements to address the issue," and the company hoped to have a fix in coming weeks.

The roof of the BIG and Heatherwick Studio-designed Bay View headquarters, which opened in 2022, is a key component of the building’s circular design strategy and features 90,000 "dragonscale" solar panels. Some believe they could be causing the interference.

Related on Archinect: Google's BIG + Heatherwick-designed Bay View HQ campus opens. Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy of Google

The other culprit would be the building’s internal layout and configuration and the density of routers within it (H/t various Reddiors). Google would not publically address the source of the connectivity issues.

Operations at the company's other new headquarters inside the St. John’s Terminal in Manhattan, which opened in February, however, appear to be running a bit more smoothly.

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...

BIG + Heatherwick Studio's Google Campus roof canopy unveiled

2019-09-11T21:00:00-04:00

Construction on the long-anticipated Google Charleston East HQ is making steady progress. The campus, designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studio, will be partially accessible to the public and will include a series of pavilions, cafes, shops, as well as retail and plenty of landscaping for both employees and local residents to enjoy. A series of aerial photos of the construction progress have been released by the 111th Group.

The 111th Group has provided the finest in aerial photography for California's Bay Area and beyond since 1994. Specializing in commercial real estate photography, mapping, aerial surveys, GIS, construction progress photography and more, the 111th utilizes airplanes, helicopters and FAA approved drones to provide high quality photography and videography services. The 111th Group is located in the heart of the California's Silicon Valley.

Also, check out this drone video of construction progress from earlier this year:

New renderings of the Google campus revealed

2017-03-01T17:08:00-05:00

Silicon Valley is in the midst of something of a building boom with several of the tech giants commissioning new headquarters from big-name architects. First came Facebook with a campus designed by Frank Gehry. Next, Apple got Lord Norman Foster to design a spacecraft-like, donut-shaped building, which is currently nearing completion. And then there's Google, who had Heatherwick Studio team up with BIG to design a sprawling campus for megacorporation. After they encountered some trouble with the site, Google traded spaces with LinkedIn and are now inching closer to a groundbreaking.

Heatherwick Studio and BIG have recently released new renderings of the campus. Major elements include a sprawling tent-like roof that will enclose several discrete structures, regulating the internal climate. A green "loop" lined with cafes and shops will thread through several of these pavilion structures.

More images in the gallery below.

Paul Goldberger on Thomas Heatherwick: "21st-Century Eames"

2016-11-10T19:39:00-05:00

[...] part architect, part furniture designer, part product designer, part researcher, part landscape architect, and part Pied Piper of design, and the things he comes up with manage somehow to be at once charming and brash. [...] shares not only the Eameses’ determination to be wide-ranging but also their fascination with technology, their interest in communication, and, most important of all, their passionate belief in the meaning of actually making things and in using materials in new ways.

Other recent Thomas Heatherwick sightings in the Archinect news:

Googleplex expansion pivots BIG and Heatherwick design onto new site

2015-06-01T20:35:00-04:00

Google already had building rights for a fifth site overlooking Charleston Park, just east of the current Googleplex [...] A 2007 lease agreement allows Google to build up to 595,000 square feet of office and commercial space there. [...] The new plans feature the same futuristic designs by European architects Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick that were part of the larger plan debated by the city this year.

For some background on the Googleplex expansion plans:

Google loses to LinkedIn in Silicon Valley HQ pitch

2015-05-06T15:29:00-04:00

In a blow to Google’s expansion plans, on Tuesday the Mountain View City Council voted to give the search giant roughly a quarter of the office space it had requested for the project, and instead awarded the lion’s share of the city’s future office development –- 1.5 million square feet –- to LinkedIn. Google received about 500,000 square feet, or about enough to build one of the four buildings it had proposed.

How this news will affect BIG and Heatherwick's design for the Googleplex expansion is as of yet undetermined. Earlier today, we learned that Google planned on constructing its new HQ using "crabots", so clearly sights were set on the Mountain View City Council giving the go-ahead. David Radcliffe, Google's VP of real estate, said in an emailed statement: “We know the City Council had a tough decision to make last night and thank them and our community for more than six hours of debate,” and that Google would “continue to work with the City on Google’s future in Mountain View.”

Details on BIG and Heatherwick's proposal here.

Critical response to Googleplex expansion focuses on suburban development, not architecture

2015-03-10T15:37:00-04:00

Google’s choice of BIG and Heatherwick Studios to design their Mountain View campus expansion is true to form: big, brash, debatably realistic, with a dash of techno-utopianism. The critical response to the proposal – a series of webbed glass shells covering reconfigurable utility spaces, integrated with the North Shore’s natural landscape and urban life – depended on where it was published. Design and architecture publications picked at BIG and Heatherwick’s design; tech and general publications focused on mega-client Google and the changes to Mountain View.

The renderings released at the end of February (see here) are part of a massive master plan submitted by Google to Mountain View officials on February 27. It is highly unlikely it will proceed as-is. But with the sheer real estate that Google commands in Mountain View, this project adding 2.5 million new square feet to Google’s cache of the majority of privately owned land in the North Bayshore area, it’s certainly not scaling ...

Archinect Sessions Episode #19: Don't be Evil, Don't Throw Stones

2015-03-05T14:11:00-05:00

This week Amelia, Paul, Donna and Ken discuss the somewhat controversial Google Headquarters design by BIG and Heatherwick. On a completely different note, we also discuss the new, and the nation's first, slavery museum, Whitney Plantation, in Louisiana.

As always, you can send us your architectural legal issues, comments or questions via twitter #archinectsessions, email or call us at (213) 784-7421. And if you can, we'd love for you to rate us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Listen to episode nineteen of Archinect Sessions, "Don't be Evil, Don't Throw Stones":

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Google Unveils BIG + Heatherwick Studios Collaboration for New Campus Master Plan

2015-02-27T16:26:00-05:00

“Silicon Valley has been the cradle of a series of innovations that, over the last decades, have propelled technology and [the] world economy, but all of the resources, all of the intelligence, has been invested into the immaterial, the digital realm, the internet,” asserts Bjarke Ingels of BIG at the beginning of a new video released today by Google (posted at the end of this article). David Radcliffe, the Vice President of Real Estate and Workplace Services at Google, continues: "Tech really hasn’t adopted a particular language for buildings.” Google hopes to change that, unveiling an ambitious new master plan for their Mountain View campus designed collaboratively by Bjarke Ingels Group and Heatherwick Studio.

Radcliffe explains that Google scoured the world for the architecture practices they found most innovative. "The BIG Studios – they’re ambitious, they do a lot of very community-focused projects and that was very compelling to us,” while Thomas Heatherwick "has this atten...

BIG / Heatherwick Studio to design new Google HQ

2015-02-25T13:11:00-05:00

This week, [Google] is expected to propose new headquarters — a series of canopylike buildings from Heatherwick Studio, a London design firm known for works like the fiery caldron at the 2012 Olympics, and Bjarke Ingels [...] The project in Mountain View, which Google has not made public but has discussed with members of the City Council, is likely to aggravate an increasingly testy relationship between the company and community leaders who fear the company is overrunning their small city.

Both Heatherwick Studio and BIG have gained global success working on an impressive variety of scales, from the infrastructural to the sculptural, and also happen to both have relatively young founders (Heatherwick is 45, Ingels is 40). While details aren't expected until later this week, it feels safe to say that the design will continue Google's urbanification of its campus – borrowing elements from urban planning and "spontaneity generating" strategies for a new HQ that has BIG's playfulness and Heatherwick's artfulness.

More recent news from the firms:

Heatherwick Studio showcases their multi-disciplinary design skills in the "Provocations" exhibition

Let the fighting begin: London Garden Bridge faces legal challenge

BIG's Telus Sky Tower breaks ground in Calgary, Canada

Session 14: His bjark is BIGger than his bjite – A chat with Bjarke Ingels at the opening of BIG's "Hot to Cold" exhibition

Playing with climate at BIG's "Hot to Cold", now open at the National Building Museum

...