Clive Wilkinson says he regrets key elements of his Googleplex design
For more than three decades, Clive Wilkinson has been among the most sought-after office designers in the world. He has planned spaces for the likes of Microsoft, Disney, Intuit and other companies seeking unorthodox approaches to work life. But he now has regrets about what is perhaps his most famous work: Googleplex, the tech giant's posh headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.Wilkinson’s statements offer a rebuke to the Silicon Valley culture he played a large hand in pioneering and now deems to be "fundamentally unhealthy." The $1 billion office complex in Mountain View, California is serviced by a secretive $250 million transportation network and is famous for its plush employee perks that Wilkinson now says he regrets. "This notion that you can provide everything that would support a worker's life on campus might appear to be extremely generous and supportive," he told NPR’s Bobby Allyn. "But it also has a whole range of potentially negative impacts. Work-life balance cannot be achieved by spending all your life on a work campus. It's not real. It's not really engaging with the world in the way most people do. It also drains the immediate neighborhoods of being able to have a commercial reality." Relisten to Archinect's 2016 podcast interview with Clive Wilkinson Wilkinson also stated that he doesn’t subscribe to the idea that the traditional office...
For more than three decades, Clive Wilkinson has been among the most sought-after office designers in the world. He has planned spaces for the likes of Microsoft, Disney, Intuit and other companies seeking unorthodox approaches to work life. But he now has regrets about what is perhaps his most famous work: Googleplex, the tech giant's posh headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.
Wilkinson’s statements offer a rebuke to the Silicon Valley culture he played a large hand in pioneering and now deems to be "fundamentally unhealthy." The $1 billion office complex in Mountain View, California is serviced by a secretive $250 million transportation network and is famous for its plush employee perks that Wilkinson now says he regrets.
"This notion that you can provide everything that would support a worker's life on campus might appear to be extremely generous and supportive," he told NPR’s Bobby Allyn. "But it also has a whole range of potentially negative impacts. Work-life balance cannot be achieved by spending all your life on a work campus. It's not real. It's not really engaging with the world in the way most people do. It also drains the immediate neighborhoods of being able to have a commercial reality."
Relisten to Archinect's 2016 podcast interview with Clive Wilkinson
Wilkinson also stated that he doesn’t subscribe to the idea that the traditional office...
