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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.
— Mercury News
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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
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... View full entry
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 Los Angeles Times
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... View full entry
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. — The Guardian
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — City Lab
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... View full entry
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. — The New York Times
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... View full entry
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. — The Upshot
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... View full entry
