Facebook’s presence in Menlo Park expanded Monday when employees began moving into the social network’s new Frank Gehry-designed West Campus.
Located across the Bayfront Expressway from the company’s 1 Hacker Way headquarters, the new building with the address of 1 Facebook Way contains more than 430,000 square feet and has room for as many as 2,800 workers. The building has been dubbed MPK20, which stands for Menlo Park and all of Facebook’s numbered buildings plus the newest one, its 20th.
According to sources familiar with the project, Monday was a soft opening and not an official one as employees are still getting familiar with the new space and Level 10 Construction is wrapping up its work.
The West Campus is LEED gold certified by the U.S. Green Building Council and was designed as “simply one large, open room — a direct reflection of Facebook’s open and transparent culture,” the sources said.
The building, which features a nine-acre green roof with a half-mile walking loop for employees and more than 400 trees, has attracted widespread attention. The space, created by CMG Landscape Architecture, will “serve as a haven for local and native birds, as the trees and plants are climate appropriate and native to [California],” according to the sources.
Moreover, the roof will absorb heat and produce insulation, enabling Facebook to keep down its central air and heating costs. A parking garage was constructed beneath the building for energy efficiency.
Facebook also chose fritted window panes because the lines or patterns embedded in the glass are more visible to and therefore safer for birds, who otherwise might fly into clear glass windows.
In a written statement, Frank Gehry described the finished product as a “remarkably human environment” with “beautiful light and scale.” Instead of a “grand design statement,” the building boasts a “toughness” and “rawness” that the world-renowned Canadian-American architect said he hopes will be conducive to “innovation and invention of the highest level.”
“From the start, Mark [Zuckerberg] wanted a space that was unassuming, matter-of-fact and cost effective,” Gehry added in the statement. “He did not want it overly designed. It also had to be flexible to respond to the ever-changing nature of his business — one that facilitated collaboration and one that did not impose itself on their open and transparent culture. This is the building that we created for him.”
Email Rhea Mahbubani at rmahbubani@dailynewsgroup.com or follow her at twitter.com/RMahbubani.
