Thomas Heatherwick has been commissioned by Google to design its new £1bn headquarters in London, according to Business Insider.
Heatherwick, the designer of the 2012 London Olympic Cauldron and proposed Garden Bridge across the Thames, is already working on designs for the tech giant’s Californian campus. The American office is being designed in collaboration with Danish architecture practice BIG, and according to the Architects’ Journal the two are likely to team up again to take on the London scheme.
If true, it seems likely that London-based architecture practice AHMM may be about to lose one of the most prestigious commissions in the country.
AHMM originally won planning permission for a 93,000 sq m building to be built on Argent’s King’s Cross development in 2013. However, this scheme was dropped after Google’s CEO, Larry Page, reportedly said the plans were too boring.
The original AHMM scheme at King’s Cross was dropped after Google CEO Larry Page reportedly said it was too boring
The new London headquarters, which will replace the search engine’s current offices in Covent Garden and Victoria and allow its staff to be housed under one roof, was originally scheduled for completion in 2016.
Delays on the project were reported to have been responsible for a number of “frustrated and exasperated” staff leaving the architecture practice, which at one time had 50 architects working on the scheme.
When contacted, Heatherwick Studio did not deny the reports and declined to comment.
However, speaking to design website Dezeen, Simon Alford, partner at AHMM, maintained that the architecture practice was still working on the project, and that further plans for Google offices around Europe were also continuing. “We are busy with Google at [King’s Cross] and beyond in Berlin and indeed are looking at projects elsewhere,” he said.
BIG and Heatherwick are working on Google’s Californian campus
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