SILICON and the CITY

URBAN ENTRY STRATEGIES FOR THE CORPORATE CAMPUS

Jeremy Bamberger | M.Arch Thesis 2011 | Advisor: Brian Price

ABSTRACT
Corporate campuses do not exist in cities, and robust cities never materialize near corporate campuses. This thesis asks two questions: Why dont corporations take advantage of existing city infrastructure? And why dont cities leverage incentives to better attract corporations? The following explores the reconciliation between these seemingly incompatible typologies. The Bay Area is synonymous with Silicon Valley. The Valley is the dominant wealth generator in the region, and yet the city stands idle while riches are bestowed on the suburbs. Whats more, corporations re-create isolated micro-urbanisms, complete with walkability, open plazas, and extensive amenities. This artificial urbanism stops, of course, at the security fence. The corporate campus has defined itself as a type characterized by horizontality, flexibility, isolation, and homogeneous program. Its evolution has incorporated a more complex programming, one which nears comparison to urbanism. Cities, however, are embedded with competitive advantages that are irreproducible in the suburbs. For the sake of a citys competitive future, we ought to seriously consider the opportunities and advantages in attracting the creative and financial capital that these corporations offer. Through the development of a new methodology that integrates GIS data with parametricism, urban form may be analyzed and targeted for the ideal conditions to attract corporations. This thesis will then explore urban corollaries to the corporate desire for flexible, horizontal, controlled, and open space. The central tension between the rigor of the urban grid and the endless space of suburban sprawl will be prodded and examined for methods that might reveal opportunities for the grid and vertical development in cities to satisfy the core principles of the corporate campus.

CORP

STAKE HOLDERS
FINANCIAL

CITY GOVT

Corporate campuses do not exist in cities, and robust cities never materialize near corporate campuses. This thesis asks two questions: Why dont corporations take advantage of existing city infrastructure? And why dont cities leverage incentives to better attract corporations? The following explores the reconciliation between these seemingly incompatible typologies. The Bay Area is synonymous with Silicon Valley. The Valley is the dominant wealth generator in the region, and yet the city stands idle while riches are bestowed on the suburbs. Whats more, corporations re-create isolated micro-urbanisms, complete with walkability, open plazas, and extensive amenities. This artificial urbanism stops, of course, at the security fence. Cities have something to learn from the suburbs. The familiar urban disdain of the suburban dilemma ignores that which the suburbs tend to do well. Cheap land, flexible re-configuration of low-rise buildings, and abundant open space attract people away from cities. Among the many suburban lessons lies the typology of the corporate campus. These micro urbanisms exist at the fringes of city boundaries. They are attracted to the horizontal scale of the suburbs and smaller, more easily influenced municipalities. The suburbs also provide ample land where corporations can build in complete autonomy, thoroughly controlling their environment and maintaining a strict, impermeable boundary through which the outside world can be kept at arms length. The corporate campus has defined itself as a type characterized by horizontality, flexibility, isolation, and homogeneous program. Its evolution has incorporated a more complex programming, one which nears comparison to urbanism. For the sake of a citys competitive future, we ought to seriously consider the opportunities and advantages in attracting the creative and financial capital that these corporations offer. The future of any city rests on its ability to reinvent itself. Great cities like New York evolved from a trading post to a textile behemoth through a modern renaissance of the arts to the financial capital of the world. New York remains a vital city that continually attracts new people and ideas. It is an urban brand. Urban economist Edward Glaeser writes: For centuries, innovations have spread from person to person across crowded city streetsThe artistic innovations of the Florentine Renaissance were glorious side effects of urban concentration. All of this runs parallel to our social system caught in a state of crisis. Its power has been subjugated by corporate and individual wealth. As our cities struggle to provide basic public goods and services, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter erect autonomous enclaves

CREATIVE
LIFESTYLE
CIVIC/PUBLIC
WORKER

CORP

CITIZEN

REVENUE

LIFESTYLE

SOCIAL SECURITY

UP BL W IC ARSP D ACE M OB

PU

BRANDING

CITY GOVT

WAGES

IL

IT

Y
CITIZEN

WORKER

CORP

WORKER

CORP

TO

L SE AB CO R O LL V R F AB I O ORC RC ATE E S
IO N

CULTURE / ARTS / ENTERTAINMENT

SERVICES SKILLED AND UNSKILLED LABOR

WORKER

CORP

CITIZEN

CITY GOVT

INNOVATION

LOYALTY

R EN IL D

E U NY D VE IT LE S E

LABOR

B LA

ANCILLARY BUSINESS

SK

WORKER

THE CREATIVE CLASS COLLABORATION

CITIZEN

IDENTITY REVENUE

PR OX I

IT

PUBLIC FACILITIES SOCIAL SECURITY

CITIZEN

SUPPORT INFRASTRUCTURE TS ENIE S) M NIT R E BA IN AC AM / S RTLI NT B TEPU A N AUR / E ST TS (RE R E / A YL E EST R U IF LT L U C

PUBLIC / PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

TAX INCENTIVES

CITY GOVT

CITY GOVT

14,898,000

600,000 sf IBM 980,000 sf Adobe

318,000 sf

AMD

12,737,148

1M sf

Facebook

that provide employees health care, open space, recreation, and lifestyle. Silicon Valley embodies the suburban form of highly controlled, flexible, horizontal, and anonymous space. Reinhold Martin writes that, Silicon Valley does not exist. It never did. You will not find it on any map. You will not find any road signs that announce its immanent appearance, nor will you find any monuments that mark its downtown, nor even an intersection that bears its name. In Martins terms, they Valley is a non-place, the antidote to the city, a place of endless possibility on the fly and available on the cheap. Cities, however, are embedded with competitive advantages that are irreproducible in the suburbs. If properly framed, those advantages can attract corporations back into the city. Companies would benefit from the immense social and physical infrastructure and leverage the shear density of ideas on city streets to spur innovation and profits. Cities would benefit from additional tax revenue, bright ideas, and privately funded public space. Local businesses and residents would receive a host of new contracts and job opportunity. But more critical to its future, cities develop a brand and identity that will in turn attract more ideas, more people, and more capital.

1.5M sf Oracle

3M sf

Intel

3.3M sf Apple

4.2M sf

Google

Submarket
Financial District North Financial District South South of Market Downtown / Tenderloin Van Ness / Civic Center South Beach Mission Bay Waterfront / North Beach

Vacancy (sf) Total (sf)

3,778,134 3,344,934 2,437,118 479,262 1,082,377 384,378 780,314 450,631 29,144,206 26,125,621 12,636,787 5,789,610 8,090,359 5,408,023 2,932,736 4,393,328

Total
Enterprise Zone Mid-Market Zone Total Office sf Vacant Office sf

12,737,148

94,520670

NORTH WATERFRONT MARINA NORTH BEACH RUSSIAN HILL COW HOLLOW TELEGRAPH HILL

DIO

PACIFIC HEIGHTS

NOB HILL

FINANCIAL DISTRICT NORTH

HEIGHTS LOWER PACFIC HEIGHTS DOWNTOWN / TENDERLOIN

N PARK / HEIGHTS ANZA VISTA WESTERN ADDITION

FINANCIAL DISTRICT SOUTH

UNTAIN ALAMO SQUARE NORTH PANHANDLE

VAN NESS / CIVIC CENTER

SOUTH BEACH

SOUTH OF MARKET

SILICON VALLEY: A BRIEF HISTORY

Silicon Valley emerged from the singular vision of Stanford electrical engineer Frederick Terman in the early 1940s. He conceived of a lateral exchange between the academic and professional environment where research and product testing from the University could translate directly into the corporate realm. In 1951 he established the Stanford Industrial Park (later renamed Stanford Research Park) where small upstarts and emerging companies could lease space on University land and take advantage of the immense infrastructure and amenities the academic campus had to offer. As Reinhold Martin notes, the backdrop for the Stanford Industrial Parkwas a secret model for all Valley campuses to come. The so-called birth of Silicon Valley occurred in a small, dilapidated garage behind a suburban Palo Alto row house where Stanford students William Hewlett and David Packard, at the urging and financial support of Terman, founded HP which later moved to Termans Industrial Park where the company continued a history of successful innovations backed by University collaboration and government finance. All of this translates to a self-perpetuating innovative and profitable machine. As Mitchell Schwarzer writes, Silicon Valley is branded as a, mecca of high technology that attracts the next generation of tech ideas and start-ups to what seems to be a magic of the soil. Facebook travels back to another Palo Alto suburban row house and evolves into the newest big ticket for Silicon Valley.

THE CORPORATE CAMPUS

The success of Silicon Valley has nothing to do with the soil. It is predicated on a subtle and complex framework of collaboration, innovation, capital investment, and branding and attraction. It was emergent. Terman could not possibly have anticipated the reality of what has become Silicon Valley. The Valley has become a model for urban development. Japan has packaged what they believe to be the secret formula of the Valley in an attempt to reconstruct its success in the form of a series of Technopolis. Langdon Winner remarks that, Frederick Termans modest proposal to revitalize Stanford University has at last become a grand scheme for the reconstruction of an entire society. The question, then, is what do corporations want in their campuses? Through an investigative analysis of IBMs Santa Teresa Laboratory, Apples Infinite Loop, and the Googleplex a series of general principles for spatial organization emerge. Horizontal continuity, control and boundary, open space and amenity, and flexibility frame the core values for the corporate campus. These principles are measured through an engineer-oriented, quasi-Marxist evaluation of utility, logic, and problem solving. As we track the following case

studies, this mentality will emerge through a range of decisions and motivations.

THE HORIZONTAL SCALE

We (and our ideas) move sideways. The desire for horizontal connectivity can be traced back to Eero Saarinens corporate office parks from the 1950s. It encourages collaboration, facilitates spatial re-configuration, and establishes a non-heirarchical, democratic environment. Gwendolyn Wright describes the corporate ethos of Hewlett-Packards HP Way, The principles seek to balance egalitarianism with individual incentives. Spatially this translates into an open plan and a self-conscious lack of East Coast symbols of corporate hierarchy such as reserved parking, special dining rooms, or prestigious corner offices. The tendency towards horizontality is partially responsible for Silicon Valleys sprawling campuses spotted along a 40-mile stretch of the 101 Freeway. Each campus individually maintains walkability and convenience, but the image of an emerging, cohesive city never materializes. As Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland, and aptly translated to Silicon Valley, there is no there there. Langdon Winner agrees that, Silicon Valley, then, is the quintessential example of new California urbanisma vast suburb with no central city to give it meaning and focus. The urban framework of horizontal connectivity translated to Silicon Valleys terms results in a logic that potentially exceeds the scope and capabilities of its urban counterpart. Urban streets and public open space facilitate social gathering and the exchange of ideas. It is an extroverted form of urbanism that is never controlled or insulated, but rather celebrated and leveraged toward a larger whole. The Valley version results in an introverted urbanism that leads to islands of success, but is incapable of contributing to any larger sense of community. Langdon Winner remarks that, although the valley is the center of a dynamic, worldwide, multi-billion-dollar industry, it has no center of its own. The urban methodology cannot be successfully severed from its context. Mitchell Schwarzer agrees that the critique of these micro-urbanisms is that, campuses do not respond to urban constraints. The Valley version of the urban horizontal reveals the engineers approach mentioned earlier. Langdon Winner remarks that, the logic of economic and technical development in the microelectronics industry and other high-technology fields tends to eliminate the importance of spatially defined communities. The resulting corporate campuses develop autonomously in isolation. Connectivity is only a concern within the corporate boundaries. The great thing about cities is that connectivity is multi-purpose and multi-objective. It leads to an interconnected urbanism where

GENERAL MOTORS TECHNICAL CENTER (1948) Warren, Michigan EERO SAARINEN

footprint hardscape green water total

1,485,000 sf 5,175,000 sf 4,600,000 sf 1,716,000 sf 12,976,000 sf

BELL TELEPHONE LABORATORIES (1955)

Holmdel, New Jersey

EERO SAARINEN

footprint hardscape green water total

335,000 sf 2,256,000 sf 5,425,000 sf 254,000 sf 8,270,000 sf

IBM MANUFACTURING AND ADMINISTRATION (1956)

Rochester, Minnesota

EERO SAARINEN

footprint hardscape green total

1,630,000 sf 3,300,000 sf 2,800,000 sf 7,730,000 sf

IBM WATSON RESEARCH CENTER (1956)

Yorktown, New York

EERO SAARINEN

MBT ARCHITECTURE

STUDIOS ARCHITECTURE

IBM SANTA TERESA CAMPUS (1975)

Vista Slope
AMPH ITHEAT RE

SHORELINE

CHARLESTON

US

PLYMOUTH

HW

10

footprint hardscape green water total

456,000 sf 575,000 sf 7,372,000 sf 1,410,000 sf 9,813,000 sf

San Jose, California

footprint hardscape green total

135,000 sf 345,000 sf 2,710,000 sf 3,190,000 sf

footprint hardscape green total

370,000 sf 527,000 sf 865,000 sf 1,762,000 sf

APPLE COMPUTER (EST. 2013)

SGI CAMPUS (1997)

Mountain View, California

Per manente Cre ek Tra il

Cupertino, California

JOAQUIN

ALTA

HUFF

FOSTER + PARTNERS

footprint hardscape green total

2,900,000 sf 2,215,000 sf 4,730,000 sf 9,845,000 sf

a wide range of ideas spread quickly and freely.

BOUNDARY / INSULARITY / ANONYMITY

The central thesis for the design and spatial organization of corporate office parks is to spur higher productivity, stronger innovation, and more profit. From a planning perspective the campus is intended to keep the employees in and the public out. It can be traced to corporate campus typology perfected by Saarinen in the 1940s and 1950s. Langdon Winner explains its origins stemming from a rethinking of productivity and profitability: Some corporate leaders, most notably those at Apple and Tandem, embraced the techniques and therapies of humanistic psychology, looking to maximize profits through fostering personal growth. The logical conclusion of amenity building and lifestyle-oriented corporate integration leads to an incredibly insular mentality. Rebecca Solnit intelligently recognizes that interior orientation has a technological corollary: The real landscape of Silicon Valley seems wholly interior, not only in the metaphor of the maze and the terrain of offices and suburbs, but in the muchpromoted ideal of the user never leaving a wellwired home and the goal of eliminating the world and reconstituting it as information. Again, what disappears here is the incalculable, this time as the world of the sensory and the sensual, with all the surprises and dangers that accompany it. In a perverse way, the behavior is encouraged by companies and evolves into a level of pride by its employees. As Gwendolyn Wright notes, by and large, obliviousness to ones surroundings is taken as a sign of intense creative energy. Not to mention the Apple employees who branded t-shirts with the exclamation 90 Hours a week and LOVING IT.

BUILDING FOOTPRINT 4 - 30 %

GREEN (OPEN) SPACE 36 - 85 %

FLEXIBILITY
The most profound manifestation of the engineers logic is revealed through an environment that is highly flexible and incredibly efficient. Mitchell Schwarzer explains that, start-ups want cheap, expandable, and undifferentiated space and they want it yesterday!. This leads to a complete re-conception of how architecture sees itself. Tech companies have no time for complexity, no patience for contradiction, and rely on a new form of branding and iconography for which architecture is remarkably too slow to keep pace. According to Wright, the mentality calls for an architecture that, is utterly easy use, allowing employees to treat

WATER FEATURE 0 - 30 %

CAMPUS PROGRAM
recreation
pool basketball court spa gym / fitness

forms and spaces carelessly, inside and outside buildings, without ignoring them altogether out of frustration. Facebook recently moved to a formerly occupied space at the Stanford Research Park (Termans original vision) and in a matter of months completely demolished every existing interior wall to create a hyper-flexible open plan allowing for the most access to executives and encouraging collaboration. Flexibility also points to an architecture that is anonymous. Wright remarks that, from the perspective of the tech company, it seems foolish to invest much capital in architecture, which suggests permanence with the costs to match. The volcanic growth and decay of Silicon Valley start-ups require an architectural product that can change hands overnight and not materially change its usability. In effect, the architecture says nothing about what is produced in the endless tilt-ups, but rather how it is produced through the flexible arrangement of people and ideas. In the real estate and development industry, flexibility falls into the category of exit strategies. As Schwarzer notes: Since many buildings are either rented or purchased by companies with unpredictable size and life expectancies, exit strategies are paramount. Undifferentiated spaces and unfettered, inoffensive visual appearance make for easier real estate transactions in the future. The mere mention of exit strategies in the Valley reveals a general consensus that its model for growth is as volatile and unstable as the future of the companies it houses. Here lies an inherent strength of cities. Cities reflect a hedging of bets over a wide range of possible futures. While Silicon Valley bets heavily on technology (as Detroit did with the car), San Franciscos heterogeneous mix of professionals and residents acts as a stabilizer for vacant space. A recently vacated office by a tech company in San Francisco can house a host of alternative tenants. It is hard to imagine anything other than a tech company in any one of the sprawling campuses along the 40-mile stretch of the 101 freeway.

5%

open space
park main street terraces

30%

eat
bakery / coffee shop cafeteria supper club

lifestyle
doctor / masseuse child care transportation / shuttles living quarters

5% 5% 10%

learn / conference
auditorium techtalk library event space / conventions

10%

open collaboration
open huddle white boards projection war room

10%

closed collaboration
huddle room white boards projection

25%

CASE STUDY: IBM

IBMs Santa Teresa Campus, by MBT Architects in 1975, is located on the southern-most tip of the Valley amidst a sprawling landscape of orchards. Its security rests in its isolation. Aside from the main thoroughfare running parallel to the site, the orchards provide an ample buffer to keep the employees in and the world out. The campus provides horizontality for its eight cruciform buildings through a completely contiguous first floor of which the central

individual work
3 - 4 person workrooms moveable furniture aggregation

courtyard rests above. On floors three and four, sky bridges offer a more localized form of horizontal continuity by connecting the campus to itself, two to three buildings at a time. The design includes tangible and conceptual notions of flexibility. A recurring theme in Silicon Valley architecture is the extensive use of color to differentiate that which seems wholly homogenous. In the case of IBM, Janet Nairn notes that, each building is color-coded for building identification. The coding is complete, from office tack boards to stairwells, carried to the exterior only where the wings of two adjacent buildings form a courtyard. Therefore, there are two colors in each courtyard, predetermined as complementary pairs. The reference to complementarity leads to the primary concept for the design. Gerald McCue of MBT remarks that the buildings cruciform shape was meant to display the binary logic of IBMs 0s and 1s of its computing platform. Its rigorous mathematical precision provides opportunity for seemingly endless repetition. Should IBMs spatial demands grow, the campus could extend over the landscape incorporating the same logical grid and form without disrupting the original idea.

CASE STUDY: GOOGLEPLEX

Almost immediately after its inception, Googles frenetic growth made its future spatial demands seemingly impossible to pin down. Their growth necessitated a hyper-flexibility that could respond as quickly as their employee-base doubled. Googles solution was to take-over the readily available and vacant former campus of SGI Graphics by STUDIOS Architecture in Mountain View. They hired Clive Wilkinson Architects to re-conceptualize the interior spaces and build in flexibility, proximity, and insularity via the main street that runs through the campus. Notions of hot (collaborative / engaged) and cold (isolated work and small teams) program was then located in relation to main street so as to provide a gradient of public/private activity. As with IBM, the Googleplex deploys color on each of the vertical cores to differentiate the buildings from one another. The campus is horizontally connected on the first floor via the courtyard that separates the four buildings. The second floor makes use of the sky bridge along a meandering procession that connects the four buildings above the ground floor. Googles cafes, gyms, basketball courts, doctors, open space, shuttle system, and recently announced plans to provide on campus housing for its employees demonstrate the corporate logic that a productive employee is one that is physically present as long as possible. Reinhold Martin notes that rather than any sense of continuity with its surroundings, the campus depended on the internalization of the corporate lifestyle to the extent that

IBM LABS - Santa Teresa, CA

GOOGLEPLEX - Mountain View, CA

there was no longer any distinction between what CIAM used to call Dwelling, Leisure, Work, and Transportation.

CASE STUDY: APPLE

Apples existing campus in Cupertino leveraged flexibility in the design process. Apple hired HOK to essentially erect six building shells, with each interior reserved six separate interior design firms. The result is a mash-up of interior spaces where no similarities can be found. Floor plates at different heights, vertical and horizontal circulation independently organized, and a Crayola explosion of varying colors marking the interior walls and fixtures, indeed no single coherency, apart from the shells, may be ascertained. The central courtyard provides for horizontal connectivity between the buildings that surround it. Apple also utilized a conceptual framing of horizontality and flexibility: an elliptical plan with meandering and intersecting pathways. It is the concept of the infinite loop, and it finds its place in the street name of the buildings address.

EXPLORING THE CAMPUS IN THE CITY

The city offers tech companies an existing social and physical infrastructure, a ready supply of labor, and a breadth of new ideas and collaborative opportunity flowing along its streets. Companies will bring in much needed tax revenues, public amenities in the form of open spaces and capital investment, and a boost to local business. The core benefit, however, will be the tech companies ability to re-brand the city as a new mecca for the next generation of tech to flock to its streets and share new ideas. The city will become more competitive and increase its chances of survival in the global market. There is speculative evidence that this is already happening. As Edward Glaeser notes, technology innovators who could easily connect electronically pay for some of Americas most expensive real estate to reap the benefits of being able to meet in person. This thesis will propose a new campus typology in San Francisco. The selected site (Mid-Market area) will leverage the existing Enterprise Tax Incentive and additional Mid-Market initiated by the city of San Francisco to attract businesses to locate there, most recently demonstrated by Twitter.

APPLE CAMPUS - Cupertino, CA

METHODOLOGY
This thesis will depend heavily on quantifying and qualifying urban demographics, infrastructure, property valuation, and urban amenities and comparing them to the wants and desires of the corporate campus. By incorporating the datasets of GIS and the power of parametric analysis through Grasshopper, this thesis will

PUBLIC OPEN SPACE

LEVERAGING EXISTING URBAN FABRIC

CIVIC

CULTURAL / INSTITUTIONAL / EDUCATIONAL (CIE)

PROXIMITY TO CREATIVE CAPITAL

INVERTING PROPERTY VALUE

LOCATING CHEAP LAND

LOCATING EXISTING POPULATION

DISPLACING THE FEWEST PEOPLE

analyze existing urban constraints and opportunities and provide a framework for companies with varying concerns and priorities to identify ideal locations for an urban corporate campus. The framework will also be dynamic in that it will respond and update its analysis as each new company moves into the district and develops its own amenities, providing the next corporate campus the opportunity to make decisions with the most up-to-date information. Following the corporate logic, proximity to open space and educational/cultural facilities is highly valued. The open plaza in front of City Hall will be a significant attractor. Mid-Market is also home to a majority of the formal cultural institutions (ACT, Main Library, Asian Art Museum, and many theatres and galleries) as well as UC Hastings, one of the premier law schools in the state. Proximity to these existing institutions will also play a significant role in evaluating a corporations core principles in its campus. A major challenge facing this thesis is the constraint on flexibility in the urban environment. Unlike the tilt-ups that scatter throughout the suburban landscape, the urban fabric is large, old, slow, difficult to tear down, and even more difficult to build anew. As such, the framework must respond to urban constraints and reframe the notion of flexibility. Through the identification of vacancy patterns (from suites, to floors, to entire buildings), the framework will prioritize adjacency and the potential to horizontally connect existing vacant space. Property valuation and existing population will also weigh on the framework. Should a corporation want to redevelop a portion of the city, emphasis will be placed on the cheapest land available and an interest in displacing the fewest number of existing city residents. Again, as the data changes, the model will continually update and provide the most current snapshot of the district. Perhaps the most significant advantage a city offers is its heterogeneity and its ability to share resources. While security and privacy are necessary elements for certain aspects of the corporate campus, they are by no means translated into every spatial condition of the corporate campus. The lifestyle program (cafes, recreation facilities, parking, day care, living quarters, etc.) may be shared by a wide range of companies. While the horizontality of Silicon Valley requires Facebook, Google, and Apple to each have their own set of amenities, the density and proximity of the city allows potential companies to collaborate in providing services to their employees, improving efficiency and maximizing profits. Whats more, many of these goods and services already exist in cities, and shall serve to attract companies nearer as well.

DISCERNING SITE

HEIRARCHICAL SYSTEM CALIBRATED TO UNIQUE DESIRES

ARCHITECTURALIZATION
Once methodology has identified potential sites within the city, this thesis will explore a variety of architectural urban interventions that deal with the corporate campus notions of horizontality, controlled space, flexibility, and open space. Depending on the architecture, these demands may be provided for, re-framed, or re-contextualized within the urban fabric. The following four categories provide for a range of interventions, each measured according to its cost, flexibility, horizontality, and effect on open space. The categories include the urban bridge, building over existing urban fabric, building underground, and what will be called occupy the street. The breadth of urban response is meant to facilitate the widest possible range of corporations, each with a unique set of desires and constraints.

URBAN BRIDGE

URBAN BRIDGE
A well-documented solution to counteract the block islands resulting from the urban grid, bridging vertical space in the urban context solves a variety of campus desires simultaneously. As a strategy, it is incredibly fast and cheap compared to new construction. Urbanistically, it potentially alleviates office vacancy pressures by making existing vacancy more versatile and subsequently more desirable. The urban bridge would also cater to the corporate need for cheap flexibility. The growing startup with an unstable future may deploy the bridge at low cost and investment and satisfy their increased spatial needs expediently.

BUILD OVER

BUILD OVER
Building above existing urban fabric satisfies the corporate need for controlled space. It also retains local residents and local business that can in turn serve the ancillary services of the urban campus. It captures the suburban notions of continuity by responding vertically and urbanistically. While not as cheap as the urban bridge, the raised urban platform may provide seemingly endless horizontal continuity. And by restricting the number and location of entries, corporations could thoroughly control who and how many from the urban environment enters. Given its relationship to the context, the building over strategy will have to respond and cater to environmental requirements of the city below.

BUILD UNDER

OCCUPY THE STREET

CHEAP

BUILD UNDER
Similar to the previous example, subterranean construction offers an extensive potential horizontal network for the campus employees to share ideas. It would be similar in cost and similarly preserve the urban context to building over. Building under does provide two advantages lacking in the raised platform. It would be far more successful in activating the street and neighborhood than the campus in the sky. The new ground floor could house a range of easily accessible service and retail opportunities. For the corporation, building under also provides a level of anonymity and secrecy. Unlike building over, this strategy will not add a logo to the skyline. The obvious challenge to subterranean architecture is to make it perceptually above ground. Great care and design consideration will have to address light, air, and the feeling of openness.

FLEXIBLE
OPEN SPACE

HORIZONTAL

URBAN BRIDGE
CHEAP

FLEXIBLE
OPEN SPACE

HORIZONTAL

OCCUPY THE STREET

Arguably the most radical response to urban form, what I term occupy the street reconceives the street as a place of opportunity. The street is the most horizontal infrastructure a city has to offer. San Franciscos Market Street spans up to 100 at its widest providing ample building thickness. It would also serve as a street and urban activator, possibly doubling store frontage in desirable areas.

BUILD OVER
CHEAP

FLEXIBLE

HORIZONTAL
OPEN SPACE

From the corporate perspective, low-rise horizontality becomes a reality in the city. At street level, the corporate campus would be adjacent to ancillary goods and services. Controlled space becomes more challenging than the previous examples, but hardly insurmountable.

BUILD UNDER
CHEAP

FLEXIBLE

HORIZONTAL
OPEN SPACE

The corporate campus is not mutually exclusive to the urban context. By re-conceptualizing the problem, re-framing corporate desires, and re-contextualizing possible solutions we can find ways for corporations to exist in cities, at their discretion, with all the possible advantages associated with our great cities. The corporate campus need not be relegated to the suburbs. It is due time to welcome the campus typology into the city.

OCCUPY THE STREET

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