Right in the heart of Silicon Valley, Facebook is cooking up a big new project to expand its Menlo Park campus into what can only be described as a fully fledged town.
Since humble beginnings in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room, Facebook Headquarters has passed through a number of short-lived locations rapid growth led to years of hopping from one office to another however the routes are only getting deeper in their current location and it's not hard to see why Facebook's campus sits in a not so little corner of Palo Alto and the entirety of its construction has been built around the well-being of the people that make the company tick.
The employees stepping away from canning workers into grey cubicles like sardines, Facebook's headquarters follows an open-plan, Natural light filled home away from home approach, that encourages creativity, collaboration and good vibes only close to the banks of San Francisco Bay.
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Facebook's Menlo Park or MPK campus sprawls across hundreds of acres and is split into three soon to be four sections. The official headquarters known as the firm's east campus was where it all started. 2000 Facebook employees migrated over to the 11 revitalized buildings in the closing months of 2011 and since then the already amazing space has reformed into a product of the people who roam its many common places. Employees are allowed to and are actively encouraged to hack their spaces be it by painting their desk pink or moving a filing cabinet to the corner to make way for a new cactus.
Facebook Headquarters feels more of an institution than an office, there's even an old closet that went from housing a few board games to becoming a kitted out arcade complete with dance dance revolution and a few other old school classics what more could you possibly want!
The buildings of the east campus surround a huge courtyard and instead of filling this space with eye candy landscaping and benches that nobody would sit on; Facebook built their very own main street! A small town of sorts that's been based on Palo Alto's actual main street.
Main Street offers staff a place to grab a coffee, hang out between meetings and meet colleagues for collaboration. There's a main plaza, a number of eateries and also a health center where employees can pick up medications or even see a doctor.
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Facebook’s east campus reinvented what a company headquarters could look like and the ethos of creating workspaces that genuinely excite and inspire has been followed throughout its many expansions known as MPK20.
Facebook's second location sits just a stone's throw away from headquarters on the other side of the Bayfront expressway. The building was designed by Canadian architect Frank Gehry and at the time of completion it was the world's largest open plan office. The goal of MPK 20 was to create the perfect engineering space for Facebook's teams to work together and bounce ideas off one another. The single room office houses no less than 2800 employees and teams are encouraged to mix with those from other departments. Despite its huge size the building itself went from drawing board to completion in just three short years which was mostly thanks to the minimalist and stripped back approach. The bulk of the materials used were readily available; Metal, Concrete and Glass which reduced the construction time to an absolute minimum.
Zuckerberg commented on the building saying “it's pretty simple and it isn't fancy but that's on purpose; we want our space to feel like a work in progress. when you enter our buildings we want you to feel how much left there is to be done in our mission to connect the world”
Although the building itself is amazing in its own right, one of the best features of MPK 20 is its 9 acre 36000 square meter rooftop garden. The elevated paradise covers the entire roof and feels like a true out of town Park with its mature trees and native shrubbery. The rooftop garden is the perfect place to take a blue light break and also contributes to the building's led gold certified status by insulating the building naturally which greatly reduces heating and cooling demands.
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The designers of MPK 20 worked very closely with Facebook to reduce the building's environmental impact and together they realized this goal in stunning fashion. The building features a reclaimed water system that saves around 17 million gallons of water each year. 1.4 megawatts of photovoltaic solar panels that generate almost 2 million kilowatt hours of electricity every year and huge windows that bring in ample sunlight reducing electricity usage significantly.
The rate of Facebook's never-ending growth shows little sign of slowing down if anything it's only getting faster there are already more than 10000 people working out of Facebook's forward-thinking campus however this number is set to stretch beyond 30000 over the next 10 years facilitating the need for another expansion project that will turn the social networks headquarters into a full-scale community.
Unveiled in 2017, the proposed willow campus will be Facebook's biggest project to date. The new venture will feature more than 1.75 million square feet of office space, 125000 square feet of retail space and one and a half thousand housing units. 15 of which will be sold well below Market value. The town will also benefit from all the amenities a suburb of this size undoubtedly needs.
We are talking Super Markets, Health Centers, Sports Grounds and maybe even a school. Facebook's big picture goal is to create a vibrant and integrated mixed-use village that will provide much needed services not only for Facebook's growing workforce but for the surrounding local community as well.
Facebook aimed to break ground before 2023 however it's unclear whether or not they're on track for this milestone regardless the huge development is planned to be phased in over the next few years starting with the office spaces, housing and retail units followed by further expansions in the subsequent years until the nostalgic nod to the working towns of yesteryear is complete.
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