this quiet corner of Menlo Park in
California is home to the largest social
network on earth with an extensive
campus free food and drink arcade games
ball pits one of the world's largest
open plan offices on-site doctors and
even free dry cleaning the home of
Facebook is unlike any other commercial
headquarters but what drove the
development of this entire new district
and how did the social networks HQ go
from a Harvard dorm room to the vast
site it occupies today this is the story
of the town that Facebook built
from the original site going live in
Mark Zuckerberg Harvard dorm room in
February 2004 Facebook has grown at an
astonishing rate gaining thousands of
users within just a few weeks of its
launch and now serving 1.4 billion
active users every day the site's
headquarters has resided in a number of
locations over the years dominating
Zuckerberg Harvard room in its first few
months he and his co-founders Eduardo
Saverin Dustin Moskovitz and Chris
Hughes rented a small house in Palo Alto
California over the summer of 2004 with
the intention of returning to Harvard
for the next semester but a significant
investment from Peter Thiel saw Facebook
move into their first official office on
Emerson Street in downtown Palo Alto
that same summer and enter a rapid new
phase of growth
from there the firm concurrently resided
in a number of different locations
across Palo Alto eventually
consolidating into a large base at 1600
and 1000 fornia Avenue in 2009 around
the turn of the decade Facebook began
evolving from a social network used
primarily by young people at schools
colleges and universities into a truly
global platform with over 500 million
users of all ages across society with
its impact growing 2010 saw the firm
open an engineering office in Seattle
and break ground on its first custom
built data center in Oregon for its
headquarters Facebook is the former Sun
Microsystems canvas in the Menlo Park
region of Palo Alto
[Music]
in December 2011 two thousand Facebook
employees moved into ten revamped
buildings on the Sun Microsystems site
which is now known as the firm's
East Campus in designing the new work
environment Facebook focused on how
employee well-being could improve
creative thinking drive innovation and
increase productivity gone was the
top-down structure of corporations with
the CEO based on the top floor of a
skyscraper the flat spread out campus at
Facebook's HQ made everyone feel equal
the private offices and cubicles that
had defined corporate workplaces since
the 1920s were replaced with open plan
offices high ceilings communal breakout
areas that foster collaboration and a
central courtyard linking all of the
campus buildings together and
encouraging movement throughout the day
the design of the campus with buildings
enclosing a secure central courtyard
made it easy to collaborate and feel
part of a community once you were on the
inside
externally the facility was surrounded
by car parking and was much more
uninviting a feeling I definitely
encountered when I visited in 2013
with its unprecedented growth rate
together with the acquisition of
Instagram and whatsapp indication that
Facebook would soon outgrow even this
site plans were developed for a further
expansion across highway 84 on what will
become known as West Campus
[Music]
designed by Frank Gehry the first stage
of Facebook's 1 billion USDollar
headquarter expansion was the 433
thousand square foot
forty thousand square metre mpk 20 which
opened in March 2015 located adjacent to
the original campus and just to the
south of highway 80 for the expansion
houses a further 2,800 employees while
an underground tunnel back to the East
Campus encourages movement and a feeling
of community among staff following the
East Campus philosophy the focus of mpk
20 was to create an eco-friendly
environment that brings people together
when first completed the building was
home to the world's largest open plan
office allowing Facebook to drive
connections between its team as well as
online the LEED Gold certified building
exceeds the requirements of California's
strict energy code by 25 percent all at
1499 parking spaces are located at
ground level beneath the office making
effective use of space whilst preventing
the car park surface from accumulating
feet
the building is topped by a nine acre
36,000 square meter green roof
containing over 400 mature trees and
over a hundred thousand native plants
which insulate the building reducing
overall heating and cooling costs
recognizing the effects that trees and
the natural environments have on
productivity employees are encouraged to
work outdoors and the rooftop is
equipped with Wi-Fi whiteboards and
unique working spaces Zuckerberg himself
is known to enjoy walking meetings and
has given interviews to journalists
while strolling across the expansive
rooftop park
[Music]
in more recent times Facebook has
matured to become an intrinsic part of
our social fabric it's team are now
pioneering new ways to build communities
and connect people around the world
whilst addressing numerous challenges
that didn't exist before it was launched
such as the rise of fake news and the
effects of excessive social media use on
psychological well-being with an
expanding team Facebook completed its
second headquarter expansion in June
2018 mpk 21 also designed by Gary
connects to the original mpk 20 via the
bold a vast open landscape space designs
to further encourage interaction and
collaboration amongst employees at five
hundred and twenty four thousand square
feet or 48 thousand square meters this
latest expansion is even bigger than the
record-breaking mpk 20 and was built in
just 17 months compared with the 22
month program 4mpk 20 designed to
achieve a LEED Gold certification mpk 21
includes many of the features of its
neighbor together with a reclaimed water
system that saves over 77 million liters
of water annually and 1.4 megawatts of
solar panels across its green roof
containing a 2,000 person event space
and a simple single pathway traversing
the length of the building everything in
mpk 21 takes interaction and
collaboration to the next level with a
planned pedestrian bridge over highway
84 connecting the campus to the parks of
the nearby Bay Trail and an additional 2
acre park implausible Facebook festivals
the health and well-being of staff
seemingly remains at the forefront of
Facebook's facility plans indeed as the
number of people working on the vast
campus approaches 10,000 Facebook are
now developing plans to turn their
corporate headquarters into a fully
fledged community
[Music]
unveiled in 2017 plans for the vast
willow campus are set to radically
change the wider Menlo Park area while
Facebook has never shied away from
large-scale projects its willow campus
takes things up a gear yet again working
with OMA in New York Facebook a planning
more than 1.75 million square feet of
office space a hundred and twenty five
thousand square feet of retail 1,500
housing units of which 15% will be sold
with low market value
a grocery and a pharmacy as part of the
expansion their goal is to create a
vibrant and integrated mixed-use village
that will provide much needed services
not only for Facebook's growing
workforce but for the surrounding local
community as well set to be developed in
phases the initial office housing and
retail elements are set to open in 2021
and will be followed by subsequent
expansions through to 2023 by investing
heavily in the area Facebook aims to
improve transport links which have
fallen well behind what is required for
growth in the region in addition to its
headquarter site the firm continues to
custom build its own data centers such
as this one cooled by Arctic air in
Sweden alongside a network of offices in
major cities around the world from its
continued expansions it is clear that
people are at the center of Facebook's
working culture and that the social
network is challenging the established
conventions of what a workplace should
be
with the wealth of many tech giants now
exceeding that of entire countries the
role they play in giving back to
societies is under increasing focus
while Facebook are the first to admit
that they are far from perfect and even
reflects this in some of the unfinished
feel of their office fit-outs their
headquarter campus in California
demonstrates their desire to care for
their people and to address their
impacts on the surrounding community if
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