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Google's recently released filing shows plans to build an 80-acre development that will encompass up to 7.3 million square feet of office space and 5,900 units of new housing in San Jose, California, reports CNBC. This exceeds the initial proposal of 6.3 million square feet of office space... View full entry
Google's Architect-In-Residence and Head of R+D for the Built Environment, Michelle Kaufmann, will help lead the first ever 2019 fellowship cohort. After releasing an open call for fellowship applications earlier this year, four fellows have been chosen to help spearhead Google's newest... View full entry
Google and the Château de Versailles have teamed up to take VR users on a private tour of Louis XIV's royal residence. It's the largest photogrammetry project ever done at the castle, with 21 rooms and 387,500 square feet of internal surfaces captured. — Engadget
Google has also made it possible to "handle and inspect over 100 sculptures, paintings and other works of art and see them with incredible close-up detail," according to Engadget. The experience is currently only available to HTC Vive and Oculus Rift users. In addition to the virtual tour... View full entry
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... 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
...one issue stands out as particularly urgent and complex: housing. The lack of new supply, combined with the rising cost of living, has resulted in a severe shortage of affordable housing options for long-time middle and low income residents. As Google grows throughout the Bay Area—whether it’s in our home town of Mountain View, in San Francisco, or in our future developments in San Jose and Sunnyvale—we’ve invested in developing housing that meets the needs of these communities. — Google
Last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the company's pledge to invest in the development of affordable housing across the Bay Area. With the multi-billion dollar tech company calling the San Francisco Bay Area home with its beginnings starting over 20 years ago, Google is aware of its... View full entry
Sidewalk Labs, Snøhetta, Michael Green Architecture, and Heatherwick Studio have unveiled a controversial $1.3 billion plan to reprogram a portion of Toronto's industrial waterfront into a new smart city prototype that envisions a wireless, data-driven, and mass timber-filled future for the... View full entry
The Stonewall Riots in June 1969 set forth the fight for LGBTQ rights that continues today. To honor the last five decades of its lasting impact, the LGBT Community Center of NYC teamed up with the National Park Service, with support from Google, to create an interactive, augmented reality... View full entry
Seattle’s construction frenzy turned deadly Saturday afternoon when a tower crane working on a new Google campus fell like a thunderbolt from the roof of a South Lake Union building, smashing into six cars and killing four people. — The Seattle Times
"The four-building, 607,000-square-foot project will house a new Google Seattle campus, and also include about 150 new apartments," reports The Seattle Times about the tragic incident at a South Lake Union site at Fairview Avenue and Mercer Street. "Construction began in 2017 and is set to be... View full entry
The installation is called A Space for Being: Exploring Design’s Impact On Our Biology, and it digs into the topic of neuroaesthetics–basically, the study of how beauty affects your brain. It’s three rooms that will be set up in Spazio Maiocchi, built in conjunction with architect Suchi Reddy. They’re not exactly identical, but each room decorated with the same furniture line from Muuto... — Fast Company
In 2018 Google debuted its first home installation at the Milan Furniture Fair, aka Salone del Mobile. Although the company's debut of its domestic software was not something new or revolutionary, it allowed for the multi-billion dollar company to enter the realm of spatial design through their... View full entry
In 2017, Sidewalk Labs, aka Google's Company for Cities, announced plans to build an innovation-forward community along Toronto's waterfront. Developed alongside designs by starchitecture firms Snøhetta and Heatherwick Studios, the idea behind the mini smart city is to integrate cutting-edge... View full entry
Kungsträdgården is the most important park in Sweden, [...] It is the thread that pulls together the historical power of the monarchy with the commercial blocks of Hamngatan and the working-class districts of Södermalm. This is very important for democracy because it has to do with power, symbolically and spatially.
Stockholm, Sweden's beloved capitol is home to stunning landscapes that keep residence and visitors mesmerized. Its cobblestoned streets are lined with amazingly preserved buildings, beautiful open water views, and public spaces. Nestled in the heart of Stockholm is Kungsträdgården, one of the... View full entry
A privacy expert tasked with protecting personal data within a Google-backed smart city project has resigned as her pro-privacy guidelines would largely be ignored by participants.
“I imagined us creating a Smart City of Privacy, as opposed to a Smart City of Surveillance,” Ann Cavoukian, the former privacy commissioner of Ontario, wrote in a resignation letter to Google sister company Sidewalk Labs.
— Planet Free Will
Smart phones, smart cars, smart cities, but smart for who? View full entry
Google has started estimating greenhouse-gas emissions for individual cities, part of what it recently described as an ambitious new plan to deploy its hoard of geographic information on the side of climate-concerned local leaders. — The Atlantic
Google has launched a new online tool, the Environmental Insights Explorer, which tracks emissions inventory on a city scale. The program is still in beta mode and currently only provides data for five cities (Pittsburgh, PA; Mountain View, CA; Victoria, BC; Melbourne, AU; Buenos Aires, AR) but... View full entry
