Take a look at the plans for Google’s new 1 million-sf London campus

Google’s King’s Cross Campus has taken another step forward as the company recently submitted an application for planning permission to Camden Council.

The London HQ, which will be purpose-built and is designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studio, will rise 11 stories and comprise over 1 million sf. Google will occupy 650,000 sf of the new campus. The building will include cafes, gym and pool facilities, a covered multi-use games area, an Events Center, and staff training facilities.

A landscaped roof will include terraces and a walking trail that stretches the length of the building while the ground floor will provide space for retail. “By opening up the ground floor and activating the roofscape, the light and airy workspaces are sandwiched between the terraced gardens on the roof and market halls, auditoria, and shops on the ground,” says Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner at BIG, in a release.

The building has been designed from a family of interchangeable elements that allow the headquarters’ workspaces to quickly and easily adapt to change. When combined with the current building at 6 Pancras Square and an additional third building, the new campus has the potential to house up to 7,000 Google employees.

Rendering courtesy of HayesDavidson.

Three main points are laid out about the project’s design in the application’s Executive Summary of Inclusivity:

— The design principles are extremely coherent and aim to produce a building that has a high degree of architectural legibility and therefore ease of use.

— The organization of major floor plates and minor floor plates provides a wide range of features that will assist users in their navigation of what could otherwise be a complex building.

— The ground plane provides a great opportunity for the public to interact with the building, creating permeability and a transition between the private spaces and the public realm.

Rendering courtesy of HayesDavidson.

If the application is approved, the project could break ground in 2018.

You can view the entire application for planning permission here.

Rendering courtesy of HayesDavidson.

The Harvard studies on the unintended effects of open office defines it as space where 'one entire floor was open, transparent and boundaryless… [with] assigned seats,' and the other had 'similarly assigned seats in an open office design, with large rooms of desks and monitors and no dividers between people's desks.'