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Office Architecture: Silicon Valley’s Newest Obsession

Tech firms are not only looking for utilitarian spaces, but environments that reflect their workplace culture, and foster creativity and better teamwork.

(TNS) -- Nvidia's new triangular-shaped headquarters, inspired by the company's work in computer graphics, is a rare sight in the sea of rectangular office parks scattered throughout the Bay Area.

"It's easy to look at the building right now and think it's an object, but we're really designing an experience," said Hao Ko, principal design director at Gensler, the architecture firm working on Nvidia's headquarters. "We're not designing our father's office."

In a place known for out-of-the-box thinking and risk taking, tech firms have historically played it safe when it comes to their work spaces, opting for functional garages and tilt-up buildings over futuristic architecture that mirrors the innovation happening inside.

Not anymore. Apple hired prominent British architect Norman Foster to design a spaceshiplike headquarters that features the world's largest piece of curved glass. Google proposed building a translucent canopy with interior structures that can be rearranged like furniture, challenging the idea of immovable concrete buildings. A more recent plan shows a design that is more tent-like instead of a massive dome.

And Facebook, which tapped Frank Gehry to design an office building with a 9-acre green roof, hired the world renowned architect again for two more office buildings.

"For years, people came to Silicon Valley and asked where's the architecture? All these high tech companies and you tell me that's the building they're working in," said David Regester, president of the American Institute of Architects' Santa Clara Valley chapter. "It's been paradoxical to a lot of people. Now that's changing."

The movement away from renting space in banal tilt-up buildings partly reflects a fast-paced tech industry that has evolved from manufacturing computer chips to writing code for computer software, Regester and other architects in the area say. Now tech firms are not only looking for utilitarian spaces but environments that reflect their workplace culture and foster creativity and better teamwork.

Some experts say Silicon Valley's tech construction boom is also part of a pattern that has happened throughout history in areas infused with wealth.

"This is what rich people do. They build palaces for themselves," said Louise Mozingo, professor and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley.

Companies such as Google and Apple are using their headquarters to project their image throughout the world, and as the competition to attract the best and brightest workers intensifies, they're all stepping up their games when it comes to building the most innovative office space.

In 2011, late Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs presented to the Cupertino City Council the architectural design of Apple Campus 2, a four-story building with 2.8 million square feet of office space that will house 12,000 employees. "I think we do have a shot at building the best office building in the world," Jobs told the city.

About 80 percent of the campus is made up of green space, a nod to Silicon Valley's agricultural roots. Employees are expected to move in next year.

Foster, the architect who got a call from Jobs about designing a new campus in 2009, has said publicly that the building didn't start out as circular, but grew into that shape. It's similar to a quad on Stanford University's campus or London Square where houses are surrounded by a park.

Jobs' presentation to the City Council was also his last public appearance before his death, and Apple Campus 2, estimated to cost about $5 billion, became wrapped up in the legacy the tech titan left behind.

"It changed the game. It's a sheer question of one-upmanship. How are you going to keep competing with that image, and how does your image measure up?" Mozingo said.

Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang also played a role in shaping the design of its new Santa Clara headquarters, which is under construction and expected to open in 2017.

"(Jen-Hsun) wanted this building to really speak to the soul of Nvidia," said John O'Brien, Nvidia's director of real estate. The polygon shape, a basic building block in computer graphics, showcases Nvidia's business in visual computing.

Atop a hilly light gray roof, sunshine radiates through triangular skylights, brushing the hard hats and backs of construction workers up high. The shape repeats itself throughout the building from the ceiling to the shadows dancing inside.

Pointing to an MIT study that shows collaboration drops if employees are located on different floors, O'Brien said they wanted to put as many employees on the same level as possible. Surrounded by greenery, the $380 million building is two stories, spans 500,000 square feet and will house about 2,500 employees.

Gensler architects have also been using Nvidia's Iray technology to render photorealistic images of the headquarters, allowing them to see in virtual reality how light filters through the building, get a sense of how the space and materials feel, and see the progression of the construction from the view of a drone.

"The building we're doing for Nvidia is really a big thesis of how we can enhance the collaboration that happens in a building," Ko said.

Other tech firms and even real estate developers have been asking themselves the same question.

Facebook, which often says its work is 1 percent finished, has tried to maintain an informal culture with a Frank Gehry-designed space that includes steel girders and wires dangling from the ceiling.

"The building itself is pretty simple and isn't fancy. That's on purpose. We want our space to feel like a work in progress. When you enter our buildings, we want you to feel how much left there is to be done in our mission to connect the world," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a 2015 social media post about the space.

Planning to add two more office buildings in Menlo Park, the company has maintained it isn't looking to make big architectural statements, purposefully trying to incorporate the landscape around the site. Still, bolder and more diverse design elements are part of the proposed campus expansion, including a yellow bicycle and pedestrian bridge that zigs and zags.

Even buildings planned as rentals are making bolder architectural statements.

In San Francisco, Salesforce leased more than half of a 61-story skyscraper owned by real estate developer Hines and Boston Properties. Designed by well-known Argentine-American architect César Pelli, the Salesforce Tower will be the tallest building in the city, marking what's being called the center of the new economy.

Architecture firm HOK designed Central Wolfe, an office space that is being leased by Apple in Sunnyvale. The campus, which real estate developer Landbank Investments sold to Jay Paul Co., didn't have a tenant when it was first designed but featured an unusual cloverleaf-shape that was inspired by the redwood forests and oak trees in the Bay Area.

The building includes elements that attract tech companies: large floor plates to fit as many workers on the same floor, hidden parking, greenery and the use of more natural light and renewable energy in the building.

"It's really growing out of the expectations from the technology clients that the building needs to be smarter, more beautiful and more effective," said Paul Woolford, design principal for HOK's San Francisco office. "Those things together are creating frankly more exciting and creative designs than we've seen in the past."

©2016 the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.