SUNNYVALE — Google has unveiled its first mass timber office building, a cutting-edge and eco-friendly structure in Sunnyvale the search giant hopes will be a productive and healthy workspace for its employees.
Over time, the five-story structure — built on the site of the one-time headquarters of video games pioneer Atari in a homage to Silicon Valley’s legendary past — is expected to have 96% less carbon emissions than a conventional steel and concrete office building of equivalent size.
“This building, 1265 Borregas, showcases creating sustainable buildings that empower people to do their best work,” said Michelle Kaufmann, Google’s director of R+D for the Built Environment and the guiding force behind the creation of the new workspace in Sunnyvale’s Moffett Park district.
Michelle Kaufman, Google’s director of R+D for the Built Environment, stands inside a game room that pays homage to video games pioneer Atari inside a Google mass timber office building at 1265 Borregas Avenue in Sunnyvale, Nov. 20, 2024. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Leaves made of wood hang from a mobile inside Google’s first mass timber office building at 1265 Borregas Avenue in Sunnyvale. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Google executives are confident the eye-catching office building, constructed largely with pieces of Douglas fir wood pieces that are pressed together, will provide a healthy place for workers to also be productive.
“The way to empower people to do their best work is to give them access to nature, views and daylight,” Kaufmann said during a ribbon-cutting event to officially open the building on Wednesday. “This building has it all. 1265 Borregas reflects our latest ways of working.”
Michelle Kaufman, Google’s director of R+D for the Built Environment, stands outside the search giant’s new mass timber office building at 1265 Borregas Avenue in Sunnyvale. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
An employee uses a quiet room at Google’s new mass timber office building at 1265 Borregas Avenue in Sunnyvale. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
The building totals 182,500 square feet, according to official documents on file at Sunnyvale City Hall. That could potentially accommodate 700 to 900 workers, using conventional space and employee ratios.
“Hundreds” of Google employees work in the building, according to company officials. The company didn’t provide a precise number of workers, as per its policy.
The company thanked Sunnyvale officials for working closely with the tech titan on the project.
“We always strive to be really good neighbors,” Scott Foster, Google’s vice president of real estate, said during the event on Wednesday. “We are grateful to the city of Sunnyvale to let us do something different.”
Construction began on the building in late 2020 and the first Googlers moved into their offices in September 2024. Many Google teams operate in the new building.
In a post-coronavirus era, when the return to work is proceeding at an uneven pace along a path that sometimes zigzags, the new office building could serve as a magnet to draw people back into the office.
“The building is beautiful,” Sunnyvale Mayor Larry Klein said. “Seeing that open wood, the wood grain, is incredible. People can feel happy to go to work today.”
Mayor Klein also announced that Google.org had provided a $100,000 grant to Sunnyvale Community Services for homeless programs and a $50,000 grant to the Sunnyvale Education Foundation.
Yet Google hopes to do more than create an office building that is simply a one-time event. The company is betting that the building can serve as an example for other projects whose builders strive to be environmentally friendly.
“Mass timber was central to our design goals,” said Natalie Telewiak, principal executive with Canada-based Michael Green Architecture. “We created human-centric spaces. We hope this will serve as a model and benchmark for future sustainable architecture.”
When the tech titan embarked on its quest to develop a mass timber building, the company set goals that seemed to be tough to achieve at best, according to Kaufman.
Mountain View-based Google sought to fashion and construct an office site that would be completed rapidly and economically — yet still produce never-before-seen environmental benefits compared with typical steel and concrete buildings.
Yet as audacious as this effort might have seemed at the outset of the company’s mass timber office voyage, Google officials were convinced that the company’s DNA would forge a path to a successful outcome.
“That’s always been part of Google. To try the impossible,” Kaufmann said in an interview after the event.