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With its sprawling new Silicon Valley offices, Google has bet big on in-person work, with roofs covered in canopy-like solar panels and indoor spaces flooded with sunlight. On Monday, AFP paid a visit to Google’s 1.1 million square foot (100,000 square meters) campus, where the tech giant is welcoming employees back after pandemic-era telecommuting.
“Fortunately, a lot of what we were already planning set us up for a successful with Covid,” said Michelle Kaufmann, Google’s director of development for built environments.
“Thank God, because we would have constructed these buildings and had to change,” she added.
The campus is located on 42 acres (17 hectares) of leased federal land near NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, near the company’s headquarters.
It has an event centre and small apartments for employees who come from out of town for work.
Building ventilation systems use 100 percent outside air, which helps to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Cafes, fitness centres, meeting rooms, social spaces, and playful touches like multi-colored stationary bikes that people can pedal while chatting, with the option of plugging in to start charging devices with the power they generate, can be found on the ground floor.
Upper floors of the two-story structures house desks, with furniture and fixtures that can be reconfigured as needed by teams.
Workspaces are divided into “neighbourhoods” with homey embellishments and even “courtyards” with comfortable furniture.
“The ground level is more vibrant because it is more like a market.” Kaufmann explained.
“Upstairs is more of a quiet space where the teams do a lot of their work,” she explained.
The Bay View campus is designed to house 4,500 employees, with move-in scheduled for the coming weeks.
Solar panels generate electricity, geothermal systems help with heating and cooling, and water collection and recycling systems produce surplus that is used to help repair wetlands on the property.
Google anticipates that people will typically work from the office three days per week in the future, with that rhythm changing depending on project phases and, of course, the tempo of the global epidemic.
“I don’t believe any of our buildings will be empty; that is not a problem that we are concerned about,” Kaufmann said.
“We’re more concerned about having enough space because the company is still growing,” she added.