Google’s new space at Pier 57 serves as an addition to the company’s growing Chelsea campus. The linear, water-bound peninsula provides an array of solo and group, interior and exterior, social and interactive workplace and meeting spaces, as well as 50,000 square feet of dynamic public spaces for education, art, and dining. Originally built in 1952 as a cargo storage facility for The Grace Line steamship company, Pier 57 was once the largest dock building ever constructed in New York. The 900-foot-long Art Deco structure is supported by three enormous buoyant caissons anchored permanently below the water line. Through the adaptive reuse of the historic core and shell, a 300-foot-long ramp that once provided vehicular access now welcomes visitors with an interactive inclined walkway traversable by foot or by a motorized, cubic glass "inclinator." A double-height Visitor Landing is capped by a grid of 54 conical skylights, each aperture oriented in a unique direction to accommodate existing infrastructure.
The Google workspace spans three floors with a lattice of lounges, circulation, spontaneous working and meeting places, and a café. Large assembly and retreat spaces employ innovative technologies to achieve maximum programming versatility. An expansive dining terrace features twenty reconfigurable robotic planters guided on tracks and mechanically operated with mobile power, data, and irrigation systems.
Situated at the western end of the pier, Horizon Hall, a theatrical black box, achieves multiple spatial arrangements through the use of a retractable seating system, a custom pop-up jumbotron, spatial volumetric projection, dynamic robotic cameras, as well as industrial-scale hangar bifold doors that transform the space from an acoustically performative, light- and view-controlled silo to an open, multipurpose area with a panoramic view.
Conical Skylights over Visitor Landing
Workspace Terrace
