SAN JOSE, Calif. — A new study confirms it: Google is altering your brain. More precisely, our growing dependence on the Internet has changed how — and what — our brains choose to remember.
When we know where to find information, we're less likely to remember it — an amnesia dubbed "The Google Effect" by a team led by psychologist Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University.
Goodbye, soul-searching; hello, facts-at-fingertips.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...512662232.html?mod=WSJ_RealEstate_LeftTopNewsMOUNTAIN VIEW—Google Inc. is the single largest contributor to the coffers of Mountain View, where it is based. But as the Web giant expands its physical footprint and seeks to build new offices, housing and infrastructure, the city government is pushing back.
Earlier this month several city council members criticized a proposal by Google to build bridges over a creek that separates existing offices from land it leased from a federal agency. Starting in 2013, Google plans to construct up to 1.2 million square feet of buildings on the land, including offices, recreation facilities and corporate housing.
The new development will extend the Google campus into the leased land, crossing public trails along Stevens Creek that are used by commuters and outdoor enthusiasts. While the trail will remain public after Google's expansion, council members said at a recent hearing they were concerned about the need to relocate part of the trail due to the construction of the bridges, among other things. The topic will be revisited in future hearings.
Such questioning of Google's plans might become more common. In what would be a first for Google, the company has signaled it wants to tear down some of its existing buildings and replace them with denser ones as well as with corporate housing. Google leases or owns more than four million square feet of office space in Mountain View, according to the city.
That story would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. The Stevens Creek trail is nice enough, but suffers from poor connections to nearby streets; Google proposes improving them, and the city objects?
http://www.archdaily.com/157521/google-to-build-headquarters-in-mountain-view/The award winning sustainable German architecture firm, Ingenhoven Architects, has been hired by Google Inc to design their new headquarters in Mountain View, California. Expected to begin construction in 2012, Ingenhoven approached the design with the idea that ‘the architecture should be an expression of the corporate culture and at the same time a model for sustainable architecture in the broadest sense surpassing the LEED-Platinum-Standards with its holistic concept’. Jordan Newman, a Google spokesman shared about Ingenhoven, “we’ve asked them to build the most green, sustainable building possible.”
Google’s offices in Milan, previously featured on ArchDaily can be viewed here. More about this exciting news from the architects following the break.
The rise of Google Inc. Is a phenomenal success story that has just begun. More than 80% of all searches world-wide are done using Google. The growth of the company is mirrored in the growth of the Google Campus in Mountain View/California, the Headquarters of Google on Charleston Park. Google is proud of its corporate culture and offers attractive workplaces in order to attract the best talents from all over the world. Google wants to build a showcase sustainable building. On the adjacent site between Charleston Road and Shoreline Boulevard a large new building will be built for Google. The site demands a building with autarkic geometry. As part of an international selection process ingenhoven architects won the commission to design the new HQ. The clients brief was simple: It should be the best and greenest building in the world!
The new building will be home for 2.500-3.000 engineers and scientists as well as the Headquarters. The Google Headquarters is the first project for ingenhoven architects in the US and Google builds for itself for the first time. Googles success depends on engineers, inventors mathematicians, IT-experts and scientists of all kinds. The building should reflect their different approaches and enhance convenience and productivity. The building will be lively, fresh, simple and flexible and offer healthy, communicative and effective workplaces and have buzz.
Sustainable and ecologically oriented architecture is for Ingenhoven Architects a negotiated agreement. All our projects are orientated on international standards, like LEED, BREEAM, ASHRAE, Swiss Minergy, European Standard 2000 or DGNB, whose founding member we are.
The use of regenerative energies and resources like geothermal energy and rainwater plays an important role in our concepts and so the intensive integration of daylight as well a natural ventilation of buildings. With a minimum consumption of energy and resources we aim the highest degree of utilization comfort.
Google has been very hush-hush when it comes to details of its new 1.1 million sq. ft. campus currently under construction in Mountain View, but we now know some ultra-green features for the mega-project that will be online in 2015. The 42-acre site will be located very close to sensitive wetlands, so Google will only be covering 5 percent of the land with office space, and reserving a full 15 percent to wetland recovery areas. The wetlands will be accessible to employees "which executives see as a potential source of inspiration and education."
Google hopes to keep travel time between any two locations on the campus under three minutes. To assist in this they will be installing an elevated bicycle track that will connect all nine buildings together in "an infinity loop," where one can "keep circling to your heart's content." Alternative modes of travel will be a theme at the new Googleplex, as cars will also be taking a secondary role. Only around 2,200 parking spaces will be built for the estimated 4,000 employees to work on the campus. A large portion of those spaces will be housed underground, but the rest will be located at a few surface parking lots. These lots, Google hopes, will be removed once more people embrace alternative ways of commuting to work. The project is chock-full of additional green features and is aiming for the highest possible LEED rating: platinum.
Google Inc. is postponing construction on its Bayview campus at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View.
Google headquarters Mountain ViewThe company has told its contractors and construction workers at the site to come back in a year, citing design issues with the campus as it now is conceived. Approximately 100 workers were already on the job, and site work was underway, according to a source with immediate knowledge of the project.
In a prepared statement, a Google spokesperson said, “We want to make our Bay View campus a terrific and environmentally sustainable place for Googlers to work. To make sure we get it right, we’re being thoughtful in our design process.”
In August, the Mountain View-based company selected DPR Construction and Turner Construction Co. to build the 1.1 million-square-foot campus at the NASA site. The offices are expected to accommodate as many as 5,000 workers.
Brace yourselves: rumor has it that Google is planning a "blockbuster San Francisco real estate play that would shake the San Francisco market up for a long time." Current speculations have Google eyeing 14 acres of land in Mission Bay, which is could yield enough office space to house approximately 8,000 search-engine employees.
A move to The City would come on the heels of other urban expansions: Google recently signed a deal for an additional 360K square feet of space in Manhattan, and nearly 600K additional square feet in Chicago.
Mission Bay isn't the only potential target for Google - they also may be interested in the Transbay Tower. Regardless of which property they take, just imagine what happens when their newly-urban employees start looking for apartments.
This is the alternative rumor: The campus Salesforce.com owns the land and entitlements for, but won't be using, in Mission Bay:Google has a thing about low-rise with connecting bridges, which supposedly allows for frequent and easy interaction.
"The pictures" are Ricardo Legorreta's APPROVED design. If Google wants something different, they'd have to start the frequently years long approval process again. They can do that, of course. And something blander like the Silicon Valley designs might have an easier time of getting newly approved. But if they are in a hurry, they might want to use something they can start building right away (and, not insignificantly, something by a star architect that comes with the property).the pictures would not be good for Google. They reflect the much more hierarchical structure of Salesforce, which is one of the few "suit and tie" tech companies left. Google seems to like consistent height, connecting bridges, common areas flowing into work areas, etc.
May explain why the Giants and 49ers bailed. :lol:^^If there were the funds and desire to do it, a spur of the T-Third MUNI Metro could be built to Candlestick or Hunters Points. But the city seems to conceive of the commercial uses in those projects as being for the employment of people already living primarily in the southeast quadrant.
Keep in mind that San Francisco also has a "transit first" policy which is preventing parking being put into new residential projects--most have less than 1 space for every 2 units. So some workers at a Candlestick campus from distant neighborhoods wouldn't have cars even if they wanted to drive to work.
Certainly shuttle busses could be used, but that's what's happening now--and people aren't that thrilled with it which is why I think companies like Google feel pressured to put worksites actually in the city . . . in places where public transportation is good or, better, it's possible to cycle or walk to work from areas where people want to live.
It may be that I'm just reflecting the viewpoint of a lot of San Franciscans who don't live in the Southeast quadrant: Its kind of "down there somewhere"; a place we never go and not really part of the the city. I've lived in SF 31 years now and never been to Bayview. Seriously.
Internet giant Google, which recently saw its stock price soar to a stunning $1,000 a share, is in real estate expansion mode. The company upped its office space in San Francisco’s Hill Plaza building by 350,000 square feet, according to Bloomberg News. That’s in addition to a slew of deals it made this year for more office space in other markets, including for 901,000 square feet in Silicon Valley near its Mountain View headquarters, for 232,000 square feet in Chicago, and a doubling of its space in Seattle, officials from Cushman & Wakefield told Bloomberg. The company, which bought 111 Eighth Avenue for $1.9 billion in 2010, is also reportedly taking 360,000 square feet at the Related Companies’ 85 10th Avenue. Insiders said Google’s expansion is boosting the office market nationally because it’s prompting more growth in the tech sector. One analyst from Green Street Advisors told Bloomberg that the company’s expansions in San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Seattle are a “key driver of strength” of those markets.
2022 is a LONG way away...Seven New Tech Campuses Changing the Face of Silicon Valley
Google Bay View Campus
Google has pushed back plans to build a massive new "Bay View" campus on the former site of the NASA-Ames research center in Mountian View. The project is now scheduled to be built in three phases, with construction wrapping up by 2022. The new buildings will house between 3,500 and 5,000 employees, and will feature stunning views of the Bay and surrounding wetlands.
Having put their plans for a 1.1 million square foot Bayview Campus designed by NBBJ on hold back in 2013, Google is reportedly preparing to submit plans for a new campus, “a series of canopylike buildings” designed by Heatherwick Studio and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), to the city of Mountain View this week.
Hampered by an amendment to the City’s General Plan, Google’s new campus proposal isn’t expected to include any housing. But Mountain View’s newly elected City Council is decidedly more development friendly and has been positioning to overturn the previous Council’s policy, which blocked the development of up to 1,100 units of housing in North Bayshore.
And in fact, recently elected Councilman, Leonard Siegel, “wants to amend the city’s plan to allow at least 5,000 new housing units,” according to the New York Times.
Google is proposing a vision for a new campus that completely reinvents the concept of office space. Today the company submitted a master plan for the development of Mountain View's Bayshore District and the construction of its new headquarters to city officials. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, which was given an advance look at the plans, Google intends to construct four transformable structures draped in glass canopies on land it already owns in North Bayshore, an office park neighborhood sitting around Highway 101 and the San Francisco Bay. Walls, floors, and ceilings inside the structures would all attach to steel frames but would be movable, allowing workspaces to change size and shape easily and regularly as needed. Starchitects Bjarke Ingels of BIG and Thomas Heatherwick of Heatherwick Studios have joined forces to lead the design of the headquarters.
In addition to the four innovative structures, Google's master plan imagines a campus filled with nature and open in some sections to the public. Walking trails, plazas, and community gardens would sit among natural wetlands and oak woodlands. At least one Google building would be open to the public to walk through as part of a pedestrian trail. The plan would completely reengineer the area, adding 2.5 million square feet of net new office space, enough for more than 12,000 new workers.
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