“ In the plex, ” Google ’ s footprints seem less determined by architectural innovation than by the nuts-and-bolts accommodation of an elite, idealized elective community. Prioritized over style is the compound ’ s performance as a support system for the peak cognitive labor that is staged there. Instead of being stationed with magisterial Art Deco appointments as were Chrysler ’ s executive elect, Googlers lunch together on artless furniture, and while they do, they enjoy free and nutritious gourmet meals. Why fuss with decorative aesthetics when something far more valuable is being hatched during the meal? Available onsite amenities include massage, free bikes, indoor rock climbing, and regular symposia with thought leaders on a range of topics. Efforts are made to couch an idealized version of programmer lifestyle in its own idiosyncratic luxuries and to dampen any distraction or discomfort that might interrupt collaborative innovation, including perhaps going home. The Googleplex (the architecture of which was designed incidentally by Clive Wilkinson and others) may already serve as a kind of model sub-urban spatial system for the maintenance of global software platforms, but for that, it is also a highly selective population of Users. Unlike some utopian communities, Google ’ s infamous and seemingly obtuse interview questions guarantee that entrance into this rarified colony is filtered according to demonstrable problem-solving acumen, creativity, and academic pedigree.
This older more insular version of Google Cloud Polis’ footprint will apparently be getting an upgrade if it is approved by municipal councils. The oddly paired Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick may be designing a new Google campus in North Bayshore, initially dubbed “ Google 2.0 ” and marked by ambitiously open groupings of buildings ( “ workshops ” ) and gardens beneath semi-transparent canopies. The project seems to enable a more open and diverse social machine than a hermetically sealed campus bubble might. It is still geared toward staging and accelerating cognitive accomplishment, or as Heatherwick says in the project ’ s video, “ what is the best possible environment we can make, to invent, engineer and most importantly, make ideas happen and go out into the world? ” <sup>56</sup> Strategies for that staging move past the open-plan faux warehouse, “ our self-driving car team, for example, has very different needs when it comes to office space from our Search engineers, ” Google executive, Daniel Radcliffe explains. Others are more circumspect about the “ Googledome, ” arguing that it is either a wasteful expenditure or that its success will further gentrify the area, making it all but unlivable for anyone but the elect. <sup>57</sup> It is too early in the project to say anything definite about is success or failure on specific terms, but we can read in the choice to keep (at least parts of) the campus open to publics including retailers and non-employee pedestrians that Google wishes for its footprint to be more than a high-performance vitrine for its human resources, and more like a spatial platform that draws surplus value from and provides lesser surplus value to those who come. It suggests an idea about the company that is more urbanistic than architectural, however artificial it may appear at this point. The project seems to aspire to be not a basecamp for a single optimal community but a prototype armature for an optimal microsociety through which people move in and out. If the campus is a sort of utopian idealization of the Google Cloud Polis itself, this version, unlike some others, at least makes some gestures toward including the outside User in its model. The project is still to be approved, if at all, by Mountain View city council, and so we shall have to wait and see what is actually built to compare the real environmental platform to that proposed. <sup>58</sup>
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