Google's new campus looks like heaven -- at least for people who like camping
Apple may be building a jaw-dropping spaceship campus, but Google is dreaming of a new office that looks like a, um, large camping tent?
Google's early mockups for an expanded campus space near its current headquarters in Mountain View, California were made public online this week by city officials -- and the design is as quirky as the company itself.
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The centerpiece of the vast office space, which you can see in the renderings below, is what Google describes as a "photovoltaic integrated canopy skin."
It basically looks like a giant, jagged circus tent propped up by slanted tent poles, which covers the campus and is said to generate renewable energy through solar power.
The new office space, expected to be nearly 600,000 square feet, would also include plenty of green space, dining areas and space for employees to bike and rollerblade around.
Google's renderings for an expanded campus, first spotted by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, come at a time when fast-growing technology companies are in an arms race to build larger and ever more impressive office spaces to recruit and maintain talent.
Facebook moved into a sprawling 430,000 square foot campus a year ago, complete with an impressive rooftop garden. Uber unveiled renderings for a new futurist headquarters made up of two adjoining transparent glass office buildings. And, of course, Apple continues to plug away at building its unfathomably big spaceship campus.
Google originally had hoped to expand its office space throughout more of Mountain View, but the city blocked those plans last year.
As Mashable reported early last year, some locals in the area also worried that Google's limitless expansion would kick up real estate prices and push out other businesses.
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Topics Google
Seth Fiegerman was a Senior Business Reporter at Mashable, where he covered startups, marketing and the latest consumer tech trends. He joined Mashable in August 2012 and is based in New York.Before joining Mashable, Seth covered all things Apple as a reporter at Silicon Alley Insider, the tech section of Business Insider. He has also worked as a staff writer at TheStreet.com and as an editor at Playboy Magazine. His work has appeared in Newsweek, NPR, Kiplinger, Portfolio and The Huffington Post.Seth received his Bachelor of Arts from New York University, where he majored in journalism and philosophy.In his spare time, Seth enjoys bike riding around Brooklyn and writing really bad folk songs.
