bamberger final article

8/3/2019 bamberger final article

1/20

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

URBAN ENTRY STRATEGIES FOR THE CORPORATE CAMPUS

SILICON and the CITY


2/20


3/20

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 betterattract 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 articia

urbanism stops, of course, at the security fence.

The corporate campus has dened itself as a type characterized

by horizontality, exibility, 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 nancial 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 de-

sire for exible, horizontal, controlled, and open space. The centra

tension between the rigor of the urban grid and the endless space

of suburban sprawl will be prodded and examined for methods tha

might reveal opportunities for the grid and vertical development in

cities to satisfy the core principles of the corporate campus.


4/20

LIFESTYLE

CIVIC/PUBLIC

CREATIVE

FINANCIAL

CORP

WORKER

C

G

CIT

CORP

WORKER

C

G

CIT

SOCIAL

SECURITY

REVENUE

UPWARDM

OBILITYLIFESTYLE

WAGES

BRANDINGPUBLICSPACE

CORP

WORKER

C

G

CIT

LABOR

THE CREATIVE CLASS COLLABORATION

REVE

NUE

ANCILLARY BUSINESS

INNOVATION

LOYALTY

DENS

ITY

SKILLEDLABO

R

CORP

WORKER

C

G

CIT

SOCIALSECURITY

TAX INCENTIVES

PUBLIC

FACILITIES

PUBLIC / PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

SUPPORT INFRASTRUCTURE

CULT

URE/

ART

S/E

NTER

TAINME

NT

LIFES

TYLE

(RES

TAUR

ANTS

/BARS)

PUBL

ICAME

NITIES

CULTURE / ARTS / ENTERTAINMENTSKILLED AND UNSKILLED LABOR

SERVICES

COLLABORATION

PROXIMITYTOSERVICES

LABORFORCE

CORP

WORKER

C

G

CIT

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 articial

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, exible re-conguration of low-rise

buildings, and abundant open space attract people away from

cities. Among the many suburban lessons lies the typology of thecorporate 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 inuenced 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 dened itself as a type characterized by horizontality,

exibility, 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 nancial 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 nancial 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


5/20

MARINA

PACIFIC HEIGHTS

SOUTH OF MARKET

NOB HILL

RUSSIAN HILL

SOUTHBEACH

COW HOLLOW

FINANCIAL DISTRICT

SOUTH

NORTH WATERFRONT

WESTERN ADDITION

DOWNTOWN /TENDERLOIN

AIN

FINANCIAL DISTRICTNORTH

TH PANHANDLE

VAN NESS /CIVIC CENTER

LOWER PACFIC HEIGHTS

HTS

TELEGRAPHHILL

ANZA VISTA

NORTH

BEACH

ALAMO

SQUARE

K /HTS

ubmarket Vacancy (sf) Total (sf)

nancial District North 3,778,134 29,144,206

nancial District South 3,344,934 26,125,621uth of Market 2,437,118 12,636,787

wntown / Tenderloin 479,262 5,789,610

n Ness / Civic Center 1,082,377 8,090,359

uth Beach 384,378 5,408,023

ssion Bay 780,314 2,932,736

aterfront / North Beach 450,631 4,393,328

otal 12,737,148 94,520670

Mid-Market Zone

Total Office sf

Vacant Office sf

Enterprise Zone

Oracle

Facebook

AMD

Google

Intel

Apple

Adobe

IBM

3.3M sf

1.5M sf

4.2M sf

3M sf

318,000 sf

600,000 sf

980,000 sf

1M sf

12,

737

,148

14,

89

8,

000 that provide employees health care, open space, recreation, and

lifestyle.

Silicon Valley embodies the suburban form of highly controlled

exible, horizontal, and anonymous space. Reinhold Martin writes

that, Silicon Valley does not exist. It never did. You will not nd

it on any map. You will not nd any road signs that announce its

immanent appearance, nor will you nd 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 y 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 benet from the immense social and physical infrastructure

and leverage the shear density of ideas on city streets to spu

innovation and prots. Cities would benet from additional tax

revenue, bright ideas, and privately funded public space. Locabusinesses 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.


6/20

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 nancial 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 andgovernment nance.

All of this translates to a self-perpetuating innovative and protable

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 thereconstruction 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 Innite Loop, and the Googleplex a series of general

principles for spatial organization emerge. Horizontal continuity,

control and boundary, open space and amenity, and exibility 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


7/20

studies, this mentality will emerge through a range of decisions

and motivations.

THE HORIZONTAL SCALE

We (and our ideas) move sideways. The desire for horizonta

connectivity can be traced back to Eero Saarinens corporate ofce

parks from the 1950s. It encourages collaboration, facilitates spatia

re-conguration, and establishes a non-heirarchical, democraticenvironment. 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 ofces.

The tendency towards horizontality is partially responsible fo

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 ofideas. 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 tha

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 canno

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 elds tends

to eliminate the importance of spatially dened 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


8/20

footprint 335,000 sfhardscape 2,256,000 sf

green 5,425,000 sf

water 254,000 sf

total 8,270,000 sf

footprint 1,485,000 sfhardscape 5,175,000 sf

green 4,600,000 sf

water 1,716,000 sf

total 12,976,000 sf

footprint 1,630,000 sfhardscape 3,300,000 sf

green 2,800,000 sf

total 7,730,000 sf

,

g

BELLTELEPHON

ELABORATORIES(195

5)

Holmdel,NewJersey

IBMMANUFACTURINGANDADMINISTRATION(19

56)

Rochester,Minnesota

IBMWATSONRESEARCHCENTER(195

6)

EEROSAARINEN

EEROSAARINEN

EEROSAARINEN


9/20

A T

L A

CHARLESTON

FF

UH

AMPHITHEATRE

NIUQA

OJ

PLYMOUTHUSHWY101

ENILER

OHS

Vista Slope

etnenamre

P

C r e

e k T

r a i l

footprint 135,000 sfhardscape 345,000 sf

green 2,710,000 sf

total 3,190,000 sf


green 865,000 sf

total 1,762,000 sf

footprint 2hardscape 2

green 4

total 9

IBMSANTATERESACAMPUS(197

5)

SanJose,

California

SGICAMPUS(199

7)

MountainView,

California

APPLECO

MPUTER(EST.201

3)

Cupertino,

Ca

lifornia

MBTARCHITECTURE

STUDIOSARCHITECTU

RE

FOSTER+PARTNE

RS


green 7,372,000 sf

water 1,410,000 sf

total 9,813,000 sf


10/20

GREEN (OPEN) SPACE

36 - 85 %

WATER FEATURE

0 - 30 %

BUILDING FOOTPRINT

4 - 30 %

a wide range of ideas spread quickly and freely.

BOUNDARY / INSULARITY / ANONYMITY

The central thesis for the design and spatial organization of corporate

ofce parks is to spur higher productivity, stronger innovation, and

more prot. 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 1940sand 1950s. Langdon Winner explains its origins stemming from a

rethinking of productivity and protability:

Some corporate leaders, most notably those at

Apple and Tandem, embraced the techniques and

therapies of humanistic psychology, looking to

maximize prots 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 hasa technological corollary:

The real landscape of Silicon Valley seems wholly

interior, not only in the metaphor of the maze and

the terrain of ofces and suburbs, but in the much-

promoted ideal of the user never leaving a well-

wired 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.

FLEXIBILITY

The most profound manifestation of the engineers logic is

revealed through an environment that is highly exible and

incredibly efcient. 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


11/20

5%

30%

5%

5%

10%

10%

10%

25%

AMPUS PROGRAM

ecreation

pen space

at

festyle

arn / conference

pen collaboration

osed collaboration

dividual work

pool

basketball court

spa

gym / fitness

park

main street

terraces

bakery / coffee shop

cafeteria

supper club

doctor / masseuse

child care

transportation / shuttles

living quarters

auditorium

techtalk

library

event space / conventions

open huddle

white boards

projection

war room

huddle room

white boards

projection

3 - 4 person workrooms

moveable furniture

aggregation

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 matte

of months completely demolished every existing interior wall to

create a hyper-exible 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 exible arrangement of people and ideas.

In the real estate and development industry, exibility 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 genera

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 reect 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 ofce 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.

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 rst oor of which the centra


12/20

courtyard rests above. On oors 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 exibility. 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 identication. The coding is complete, from ofce 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 formwithout 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-exibility 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 interiorspaces and build in exibility, 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 rst oor via the

courtyard that separates the four buildings. The second oormakes use of the sky bridge along a meandering procession that

connects the four buildings above the ground oor.

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


13/20

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 exibility in the

design process. Apple hired HOK to essentially erect six building

shells, with each interior reserved six separate interior design rms

The result is a mash-up of interior spaces where no similarities canbe found. Floor plates at different heights, vertical and horizonta

circulation independently organized, and a Crayola explosion of

varying colors marking the interior walls and xtures, 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 conceptua

framing of horizontality and exibility: an elliptical plan with

meandering and intersecting pathways. It is the concept of the

innite loop, and it nds 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 physica

infrastructure, a ready supply of labor, and a breadth of new ideas

and collaborative opportunity owing 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 loca

business. The core benet, however, will be the tech companies

ability to re-brand the city as a new mecca for the next generation

of tech to ock to its streets and share new ideas. The city wil

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 benets 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 thecity of San Francisco to attract businesses to locate there, most

recently demonstrated by Twitter.

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 wil

APPLE CAMPUS - Cupertino, CA


14/20

CIVIC

PUBLIC OPEN SPACE

LEVERAGING EXISTING URBAN FABRIC

CULTURAL / INSTITUTIONAL / EDUCATIONAL (CIE)PROXIMITY TO CREATIVE CAPITAL


15/20

INVERTING PROPERTY VALUE

LOCATING CHEAP LAND

LOCATING EXISTING POPULATIONDISPLACING THE FEWEST PEOPLE


16/20

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 signicant 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 signicant

role in evaluating a corporations core principles in its campus.

A major challenge facing this thesis is the constraint on exibility inthe urban environment. Unlike the tilt-ups that scatter throughout

the suburban landscape, the urban fabric is large, old, slow,

difcult to tear down, and even more difcult to build anew. As

such, the framework must respond to urban constraints and re-

frame the notion of exibility. Through the identication of vacancy

patterns (from suites, to oors, 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 thecity, 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 signicant 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 efciency and maximizing prots.

Whats more, many of these goods and services already exist in

cities, and shall serve to attract companies nearer as well.


17/20

DISCERNING SITE

HEIRARCHICAL SYSTEM CALIBRATED TO UNIQUE DESIRES


18/20

URBAN BRIDGE

BUILD OVER

BUILD UNDER

OCCUPY THE STREET

ARCHITECTURALIZATION

Once methodology has identied 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, exibility, 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,

exibility, 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

A well-documented solution to counteract the block islands resultingfrom 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 ofce vacancy pressures by

making existing vacancy more versatile and subsequently more

desirable.

The urban bridge would also cater to the corporate need for cheap

exibility. 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

Building above existing urban fabric satises 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.


19/20

RBAN BRIDGE

UILD OVER

UILD UNDER

CCUPY THE STREET

CHEAP

OPEN

SPACE

FLEX-

IBLE

HORIZ-

ONTAL

CHEAP

OPEN

SPACE

FLEX-

IBLE

HORIZ-

ONTAL

CHEAP

OPEN

SPACE

FLEX-

IBLE

HORIZ-

ONTAL

CHEAP

OPEN

SPACE

FLEX-

IBLE

HORIZ-

ONTAL

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 streetand neighborhood than the campus in the sky. The new ground

oor could house a range of easily accessible service and retai

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.

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.

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.

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 nd

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.


20/20

Works Cited

Alperovich, Gershon. Economic Development and Population Concentration. Economic Development and Cultural

Change 41.1 (1992): 63-74. Print.

Dobney, Stephen, ed. Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum: Selected & Current Works. Mulgrave, Vic.: Images Pub., 1998.

Print.

Fujita, Masahisa, Paul R. Krugman, and Anthony Venables. The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions and International

Trade. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1999. Print.

Garofalo, Gasper, and Michael S. Fogerty. Urban Income Distribution and the Urban Hierarchy-Equality Hypothesis. The

Review of Economics and Statistics 61.3 (1979): 381-88. Print.

Garreau, Joel. Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Print.

Glaeser, Edward L. Cities, Agglomeration, and Spatial Equilibrium. Oxford [u.a.: Oxford Univ., 2008. Print.

Glaeser, Edward L. Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and

Happier. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.

Harvey, David. Social Justice and the City. [Baltimore]: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973. Print.

Ho, Cathy L. Silicon Valley. Metropolis Oct. 1995: 70-72. Web.

Hoeger, Kerstin. Emerging Corporate Urbanism in Europe - Developing Responsive Urban Design Strategies within

Brandhubs. ETH Zurich, Dec. 2004. Web.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991. Print.

Krugman, Paul R. The Self Organizing Economy. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996. Print.

Martin, Reinhold, and Kadambari Baxi. Multi-national City: Architectural Itineraries. Barcelona: Actar-D, 2007. Print.

Saxenian, AnnaLee. Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard UP, 1994. Print.

Schwarzer, Mitchell. Beyond the Valley of Silicon Architecture. Harvard Design Magazine Dec. 1999. Web.

Segal, Ra, Els Verbakel, and Sarah Whiting. Architecture and Dispersal. AD 2008: 102-07. Print.

Shane, David Grahame. Recombinant Urbanism: Conceptual Modeling in Architecture, Urban Design, and City Theory.

Chichester: Wiley-Academy, 2007. Print.

Steinberg, Goodwin B., and Susan Wolfe. From the Ground Up: Building Silicon Valley. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2002.

Print.

Temko, Allan. IBMs Santa Teresa Laboratory. Architectural Record Aug. 1977: 99-104. Web.

Venturi, Robert, Brown Denise Scott, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1972. Print.

Winner, Langdon. Silicon Valley Mystery House. Variations on a Theme Park: the New American City and the End of

Public Space. Ed. Michael Sorkin. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992. 31-60. Print.

bamberger final article

Documents

Transcript of bamberger final article