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There was nothing all that special about the generic campus of low-slung boxy offices and parking garages that Google first leased and then acquired in 2006. It was renovated and adapted with stimulating new interiors by Clive Wilkinson, alongside office landscape specialists DEGW, that reflected what was then an unusually nonhierarchical and experimental corporate culture. It was given rooftop solar arrays that provided as much as a third of its operational electricity. But what made that campus special from day one—and simply, radically, and inspirationally more sustainable by the day—is exactly that it was old. It had already been built. It was, in the language of the Valley, a legacy platform—with already irretrievable carbon and capital footprints. There was nothing photogenic or pharaonic about it. Instead, by working from the inside out, with smart strategies of adaptive reuse and technological retrofitting, the company was able to occupy those irretrievable footprints ever more deeply. The cost may be lost, but with stewardship and constant gradual adaption, the benefit persists—conceivably in perpetuity.
This story is from the November/December 2019 edition of Metropolis Magazine.
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This story is from the November/December 2019 edition of Metropolis Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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