The City Council of Menlo Park, California, has unanimously granted approval for the social network giant, Facebook's West Campus development, designed by famed starchitect, Frank Gehry. The West campus is a part of the 78.9 acre Facebook Campus Project.
Facebook had first approached Gehry to build a bland office campus for the company sometime back in 2012. The new office space designs were revealed in August, 2012 claiming to be the largest open-plan office in the world, reports Dezeen.
"I'm excited to work with Frank Gehry to design our new campus. The idea is to make the perfect engineering space: one giant room that fits thousands of people, all close enough to collaborate together. It will be the largest open floor plan in the world, but it will also have plenty of private, quiet spaces as well," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder had posted on his own Facebook timeline.
However, Gehry's initial plans of flared building ends that looked more like butterfly wings were rejected by Mark Zuckerberg. They then requested the starchitect to build something more anonymous and something that could go with their "hacker ethos" and culture without drawing much attention to themselves, reports Wired.com.
The plans have now been approved by the city council. Council members were very excited about the project. Kirsten Keith, a council member said that they felt very lucky to have a "Frank Gehry" building, another member, Rich Cline said that the roof-top park was the most interesting feature, reports Mercury News.
Check out Facebook's West Campus renderings here.
The Facebook Campus Project is being developed in two phases. The East Campus is a 56.9 acre developed area comprising of nine buildings. Facebook had acquired approval for the East campus sometime in May and June 2012. The West campus is a 22 acre site. The company hopes to demolish two existing old building on the site and build a 433,555 square feet building on a surface parking lot, which would accommodate 1499 vehicles. More details on the plans are available on the City of Menlo Park's official website.
