Google and Apple to expand

Source: archdaily.com

Google Headquarters, Mountain View, California, USA designed by Ingenhoven Architects

The award winning sustainable German architecture firm, Ingenhoven Architects, has been hired by Google Inc to design their new headquarters in Mountain View, California. Expected to begin construction in 2012, Ingenhoven approached the design with the idea that ‘the architecture should be an expression of the "corporate culture" and at the same time a model for sustainable architecture in the broadest sense surpassing the LEED-Platinum-Standards with its holistic concept’.  Jordan Newman, a Google spokesman shared about Ingenhoven, “we’ve asked them to build the most green, sustainable building possible.”  -- ArchDaily

Google gloats over solar success

The search giant has covered the roofs of eight buildings and two carports at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters with solar panels in an effort to build the largest solar panel installation of any corporate campus in the U.S. -- c|net

 Source: Foster + Partners, ARUP, Kier + Wright, Apple

new Apple Campus, Cupertino, California, USA designed by Foster + Partners

The city has revealed that they are very likely to approve the project, so it seems everything is on route for an opening in 2015.

the project are focused on reducing the use of electricity by generating its own energy on an on-site Central Plant, provide open green spaces “for Apple employees’ enjoyment” and to “exceed economic, social, and environmental sustainability goals through integrated design and development”. -- ArchDaily

Other Posts from ArchDaily :
    The Apple Campus in Cupertino
    Apple teams with Norman Foster
Project information from City of Cupertino.

Critic's Notebook: Apple's new campus will be a retrograde cocoon

Apple, even more than most high-tech companies, makes products lusted over by young urbanites around the world from deep within a quiet, low-rise realm, far from any skyscraper or subway line. Its Infinite Loop campus, like most Silicon Valley headquarters, is a relatively undistinguished collection of modestly sized buildings.

The more interesting question is whether a place like Cupertino can maintain its low-density sprawl in future decades, as the Bay Area's population continues to grow, and whether the council's enthusiasm for the new Apple headquarters can be read as an endorsement of a car-dependent approach to city and regional planning that might have made sense in the 1970s but will seem irresponsible or worse by 2050. -- Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times

Apple spaceship HQ might work in Cupertino -- John King @ SFGate.com

The Apple of Our Eye Architectural Record Editorial October 2011

Apple and Apricots Architectural Record April 17, 2012