Frank Gehry to Design Facebook’s New Campus

Culture

On Tuesday, Facebook received the thumbs up to expand their offices in Menlo Park. The second campus is expected to be a 433,555 square-foot building that will connect to the existing offices via an underground tunnel. The best part about this news? The project will be designed by the world famous architect Frank Gehry.

Frank Gehry is a Canadian-American Pritzker Prize-winning architect who is known for designing buildings with a lasting impression. Gehry is credited with creating some of the best modern contemporary architecture seen today.

Facebook is not the first company to commission a famous architect to build a cool HQ. More and more major corporations are hiring famous people to design their offices to stand out from the crowd and help induce a creative environment for their employees. Companies like Google and Disney have also sought out famed architect, Clive Wilkinson, to build the GooglePlex and Disney Store headquarters.

Gehry has way of designing buildings that don’t fit the usual mold. His structures usually look like they defy gravity. Next time you plan to globe trot, consider checking out some of his famous works:

1. The EMP Museum in Seattle, Wash.

2. MARTa Museum in Herford, Germany

3. Marqués de Riscal Vineyard Hotel in Elciego, Spain

4. Ray and Maria Stata Center for MIT in Cambridge, Mass.

5. Novartis Pharma A.G. Campus in Basel, Switzerland

It is too soon to tell what the second Facebook campus will look like. The plan is to include an underground passage way connecting the main Facebook HQ with the second campus. Can anyone say privacy problems? It seems foreseeable that genius ideas will strike in this underground tunnel (or top secret meetings). Also, rumor has it that the second campus might include a park on the roof. While these ideas sound great, Gehry will be sure to give them a modern twist.