{"id":6864,"date":"2016-03-28T09:16:56","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T15:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=6864"},"modified":"2016-03-28T12:13:12","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T18:13:12","slug":"hq-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=6864","title":{"rendered":"HQ California"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"googledome\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light.<\/em><\/p>\n

Who would have guessed that the Eagles would prove\u00a0our most reliable prophets?<\/p>\n

Nikil\u00a0Saval, author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace,<\/i>\u00a0traces<\/a> the planned new headquarters of Google and Apple \u2014 Googledome (above) and Mothership\u00a0Apple (below) \u2014 to their origins in what’s been called Hippie Modernism. The aggressive futurism of the two campuses “is in fact rooted in the past,” Saval writes. “It comes, transfigured, from the wrecked dreams of communal living, of back-to-the-land utopias, of expanding plastic spheres and geodesic domes that populated the landscape of Northern California around the time (and around the same place) that the first semiconductors were being perfected.” It’s Bucky Fuller<\/a> all over again.<\/p>\n

\"starship\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The central building of\u00a0Googledome is wrapped in “a sinuous glass membrane, a protective bubble or amniotic sac,”\u00a0Saval notes. “In aerial renderings it looks like larvae, incubating a new and possibly terrifying future.” It’s always the same: The more utopian an artistic portrayal of the future, the creepier\u00a0it seems.<\/p>\n

The feeling\u00a0has something to do, I think, with the absence of\u00a0angles \u2014 all those soft and welcoming curves, undulating like\u00a0the coils of a\u00a0snake. There’s also the Panopticon effect. The transparent enclosures of both Googledome and Mothership\u00a0Apple can be read as monuments to a surveillance\u00a0culture. You’re being watched, they whisper, but you need not\u00a0fret \u2014 the watcher is benign, generous, loving.<\/p>\n

“Relax,” said the night man. “We are programmed to receive.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light. Who would have guessed that the Eagles would prove\u00a0our most reliable prophets? Nikil\u00a0Saval, author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace,\u00a0traces the planned new headquarters of Google and Apple \u2014 Googledome (above) and Mothership\u00a0Apple (below) \u2014 to their origins in what’s been called Hippie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6864"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6875,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6864\/revisions\/6875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}