‘Emotion is a Function’ and the future of the workplace

When Google decided to develop their first ever purpose-built headquarters, they did a lot of thinking about the future of the workplace.

They asked themselves why employees come to an office in the first place, what they need from their teammates and what they need from their company.

The conclusion? It’s about human interaction and emotional engagement.

This notion – arguably more important than ever after lockdown – has been a driving factor in the creation of Bay View, the company’s new Californian home, designed by Heatherwick Studio and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).

The challenge faced and embraced by the design team was this: How can you make something epic in size (1.1 million square feet, with 20 acres of open space, two vast office buildings, and a 1,000-person event centre) that works at a human scale?

Somewhere that allows people to feel connected, curious, valued and emotionally engaged.

Focus on the user and all else will follow

Google asked us and BIG to imagine that there had never been an office before, anywhere; to leave our preconceptions behind and design the right thing for them. And we reflected on the company’s core philosophy: Focus on the user and all else will follow. ?

We imagined the life of a Googler. How do they sit at their desk? What do they want around them five feet away? What about 25 feet away? What gets in their way? What distracts them?

Research suggests that people working in an office tower on different floors have as much in common culturally as people working on different continents for the same organisation. The need to constantly travel up and down in elevators disrupts your ability to connect and collaborate. So we prioritised lateral connectivity, with everyone working on one floorplate – with space for teams to shrink, grow, huddle and work together – while everything else goes below.

A Temple of Togetherness

According to Eliot Postma, Heatherwick Studio’s lead Partner on the project, the simplicity of this two-floor design solution is what allows many of the human aspects to emerge.

“All the stuff on the ground floor – kitchens, restaurants, massage rooms – become destinations in your day,” he explains. “When you go and get lunch, make a phone call, go for a coffee, go to the gym, you don't need to be doing it all right next to your desk. It's a moment of stepping away.

“We spent a lot of time thinking about the ground floor as ‘city in a building.’ The area is big, we started breaking it down into urban elements, like high streets, secondary streets and cut throughs broken up with courtyards. ?Everything is varied in height, elevation and materiality, which gives it a feel of a townscape.”

Envisioned as a “temple of togetherness” framed by the swooping canopy above, this is a space to embody Google’s values, and to allow people to connect and congregate – all away from those seeking a bit of peace and quiet at their desks above.

Wayfinding is supported by use of materials (for example, all the staff restaurants and cafes are clad in redwood upcycled from a nearby air hangar) while murals and sculptures, chosen by employees and created by local artists, create memorable meeting points.

Team neighbourhoods

Back upstairs, the design team faced a challenge created by the sheer scale of the workspace.

“We kept coming back to the hugeness of these buildings,” says Postma. “We’re talking 3,000 people all sitting together on one floor. That could lead to the most terrifying outcome – toast racks of desks stretching out for all eternity.

“We always had to balance the practical aspects with the human aspects - what does a human need to feel a sense of belonging, to have a sense of relief in their day, to have the ability to work in different spots depending on their mood or personality type?

“The goal was to create some uniformity of experience, yet still allow a sense of particularity and ownership for teams of 4, 12, 20, 50 and 100 within this team of 3,000.

“We thought a lot about sociology and the Dunbar Number – the idea that 150 is around the threshold for people making up a coherent unit. When you push over that number,?social systems start to break down and you don’t know anyone’s name, or what they do day in day out. So we organised the space into ‘team neighbourhood’ zones that can occupy up to 80 people.”

Emotional engagement

At the individual scale, workspaces have been designed to be highly flexible, with Googlers able to change and adapt their desk setup creating a sense of empowerment and individuality.

Meanwhile, the placement of the canopy windows means that within your peripheral vision, there will always be at least 20 windows looking up to a tree on the landscape or the Californian sky.

Clerestory windows with automated shades have been designed and modelled to ensure every desk receives absolutely the right amount of daylight, which Postma says will allow people “to feel connected to the day, the direction of the sun, their circadian rhythms, the seasons and all those things that can be lost in really big office buildings full of artificial light.”

Finally, to remove toxins and create the healthiest environment possible, the building features a huge variety of plant life and its ventilation system uses 100% outside air. At the same time, the project team has vetted thousands of building products and materials – everything from carpet tiles, paints, piping, plywood and furniture – to ensure it creates a space that is good for people and highly sustainable. ?

All this equals what Thomas Heatherwick describes as a “fundamental questioning of workspace at this scale.”

He says: “COVID has blown apart the old paradigms, allowing workspace to reinvent itself and move beyond old-fashioned notions of efficiency. Instead, it can be truly rethought to consider the emotions of individuals and the imaginations of teams.

“Bay View was our chance to create a whole different atmosphere of work.”