RICS Environmental Impact award for Google’s Bay View Campus
Google’s Bay View campus has been recognised with an RICS Environmental Impact award. The project, which is one of the most technologically advanced office developments in the US, rethinks how a building integrates with nature, providing healthy sustainable places for people to do their work.
The RICS Environmental Impact awards showcase the most inspirational initiatives and developments in land, real estate, construction and infrastructure, recognising outstanding achievement, teamwork and companies. The winners were presented with their awards at a ceremony held at the Stern School of Business in New York on 15 June.
Google’s Bay View campus shows the stunning possibilities of sustainable design by having a 100 percent electric, net-water-positive campus, with the largest geothermal installation in North America.
We have been involved in the project since 2017, delivering overall cost and project controls management, and supporting Google with all financial facets of the project, including its budget, from project start to completion. By implementing robust controls and reporting procedures from the outset, we proved to be integral to the successful delivery of the campus.
The building’s solar-covered canopy, known as ‘dragonscale’, has over 60,000 photovoltaic shingles which generate roughly 40 percent of its annual energy requirements. The geothermal system eliminates the need for boilers and significantly reduces water consumption, which reduces the amount of water required for cooling by 90 percent, equating to 5 million gallons of water annually.
The internal layout of the campus aims for an adaptable, healthy and harmonious workplace, incorporating biophilic design principles, such as greenery, natural daylight and outdoor views from every desk. Team spaces are carefully connected and buffered from each other, with smaller neighbourhoods on the upper level accommodating deep-focus work with easy ramp access to the more collaborative ground floor.
The campus has also received numerous sustainability certifications, including LEED_NC v4 platinum, and is the largest building in the world to achieve International Living Future Institute (ILFI) Living Building Challenge (LBC) Water Petal Certification.
Greg Spittle, Vice President, said:
Google’s Bay View campus takes green building to a new scale of ambition, demonstrating what is possible and how our future built environment could look, with a genuine commitment to more sustainable project outcomes.
"From the outset our team has made an important contribution to bringing Google’s goals for the building to life, ensuring project controls kept pace with the transformative technical aspects that make Bay View a green, inclusive and productive workplace of the future."
Google Bay View photo © Iwan Baan