What if Google Owned the North? Project Summary

Manchester School of Architecture

WHAT IF GOOGLE OWNED THE NORTH? Project Overview

Morgan Wild

Alexander Gaul

morganellawild@gmail.com

alexanderstgaul@gmail.com

Context

Big Tech: Control

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hello This project sits within a speculative scenario in which Google acquires the North and takes over the governance of the Northern Powerhouse district. It anticipates nation-states as the next avenue for disruption and attempts to contribute to the growing discourse around the power and influence of technology companies, their increasingly manipulative products and how society and culture have responded to them.

It can be understood as both a polemic and an architectural fantasy.

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Context

Big Tech: Control

Context

Big Tech: Control

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Hop Stop

Titan

Prime Sense $345m

$ 8 06 b n

Quattro $275m

Novauris Tech

Nest $3.2b

Turi $200m

Siri

Apple

Apple Energy

YouTube $1.6b

Skype $8b

$6

Waymo

$ 608bn

Nokia $7b

76 b

Motorol $12b

n

Google

Beats $3b Solair Double Click $3b

Microsoft

$ 49 7

Maluuba

bn WhatsApp $19b

Altspace VR

Cycle Computing

LinkedIn $26b

Whole Foods $13.7b

$ 46

7b

Facebook n

Amazon Twitch $970m

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Oculu $2

Amazon Prime

Kiva Systems $775m

Context

Big Tech: Control

Instagram $1b

Control, Power, Influence

la

DeepMind $625m

AdMob $750m

Google Fiber

usVR 2b

Google Energy

The world’s largest companies by capital are technology companies. Each dominates its corner of the industry. Google has an 88% market share in search advertising, Facebook 77% of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74% share in the e-book market. In traditional economic measures, all three are monopolies.

For a project exploring the possibilities of design within a Fourth Industrial Revolution scenario; the question of who controls this future is inevitable and unavoidable.

Peel Group’s 50 year plan for the North.

We also looked more locally, at the reliance on private investment and the damage that it can do to the identity of cities when private companies are given too much power and political clout. Specifically, here, Peel Group who are investing heavily in projects in the North which has meant Liverpool are at risk of losing their World heritage Status. And we speculated that the promises made regarding the Norther Powerhouse and the impending Brexit will increase this relaiance on private investment.

Context

Big Tech: Control

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A speculative scenario is envisaged. The Big Tech companies continue to consolidate and dominate control of every aspect of virtual and physical infrastructure as we move into the 4th Industrial Revolution. Millions spent on political lobbying and the influence accrued by their massive data analysis, AI tech and public services control has allowed the Big Tech companies to evade public inquisition so far. Countries are now the Big Tech’s main competitors and form the natural avenue for further consolidation of power while insulating themselves against regulation.

Meanwhile, the flailing post-Brexit UK government is desperately trying to market the Northern Powerhouse to investors while they push through devolution deals to give the region autonomy. Google has accrued sufficient influence and capital to strike a deal with the British government to take on the role of the new Northern Powerhouse government. Manchester is solidified as the focal point of the Northern Powerhouse with Google at the helm. The entire population of the North are now components under Google’s optimistic new regime.

Scenario

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Context

Scenario

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OO GL

TH OR EN Context

Big Tech: Control

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Proposal

Campus Masterplan

Proposal

Campus Masterplan

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The Exchange

Axonometric

The Exchange

Design drivers & story A public facility remixed by neoliberalism: The Exchange is both town hall to the people of GoogleNorth and office facilities for Google The Exchange contains everything that an enthusiastic Googler could ever need: from an 18-hole golf course, a jungle, a bowling alley and swimming pools to sleep pods, a brothel and a maternity ward.

Big Tech companies are presiding over the rebirth of the 20th century Company Town. A neo-feudal model of participation inspired by capitalist utopias that fuelled the dystopian novels of Huxley, Orwell and Bellamy, the Company Town aligns undeniably with Google’s desire to build the perfect world.

Pullman’s failed Company Town, Illinois (1884)

Big Tech’s idealistic urban reforms, in the latest attempt to imagine a utopia, look more like a corporate paternalistic relationship with their employees; in which they provide highly enticing infrastructure and facilities to increase productivity and fulfil their employees’ consumerist hungers.

The Exchange is Google’s attempt at presenting themselves as the image of the future – reshaping culture in their image. But rather than lead the way through oppression and intimidation, they manufacture consent through desire, consumption and pleasure.

The Exchange

Design Drivers

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The Exchange

Design development Facebook claim to have the largest open plan office in the world. Apple’s new headquarters, on the other hand, has the largest piece of curved glass in the world, pizza boxes invented to prevent the pizza from going soggy and all the doorways designed to be perfectly flat, with no threshold, so employees do not lose concentration when they walk through a door.

Their desire to achieve utopia and perfection, in order to state a permanent presence on the planet, means they will go to unheard of lengths to achieve the most spectacular, the most iconic, and the most innovative.

Facebook’s Office

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The Exchange

Much has been made of Big Tech’s company culture, with their employees trading their lives for swimming pools, indoor football pitches, massage rooms and all the other bells and whistles.

But now, while they solidify themselves as the world’s most valuable companies, they are building structures that define their time. Their desire to achieve utopia and perfection, in order to state a permanent presence on the planet, means they will go to unheard of lengths to achieve the most spectacular, the most iconic, and the most innovative.

Möbius strip infinite geometry

Design Development

The Exchange is one continuous never-ending floor plate - without a single step in the whole building making it the largest open plan office in the world.

Facebook’s Footprint (currently largest open plan office in the world at 40,000m2)

We have a smaller footprint available due to the city centre location

Facebook’s footprint rationalised into a strip.

Strip is joined and looped into a continuous floor plate which fits on the Manchester site.

The loop is extended vertically until it is the tallest building in the North - also far outstripping Facebook’s floor area.

The Exchange is no different in that respect, Facebook currently have the largest open plan office in the world at 40,000sqm, without a wall or cubicle in site. While Facebook have the luxury of a relatively low density sprawl in Silicon Valley the GoogleNorth site in Manchester is constrained by the density of the city.

The footprint available would usually call for a series of stacked identical floor plates, but that just won’t do for Google.

The Exchange is one continuous

The Exchange

never-ending floor plate, without a single step in the whole building, making it the largest open plan office in the world. The floor plate is based on the geometry of the Möbius strip and loops around a central atrium that hosts the glass elevator transportation system.

Design Development

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The Exchange

Section

The Exchange

Section Extract

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2

4 3

1

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KEY 1 - Automatic opening glass balustrade system.

2 - Googlevator rail steel arm support connected to primary structure.

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The Exchange

3 - Googlevator system (see patent drawings) 4 - Primary structure steel column 5 - Primary structure atrium perimeter steel beam

GoogleVator Detail

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3 11 10

4 7

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12 6

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KEY 1 - Anodised aluminium ‘pod’ flashing fixed to supporting framework.

2 - Electrochromic curved glazing integrated into Internet of Things based facilities management system which responds to the internal temperatures and light levels within the building to adjust the transmission and colour properties of the glass. All windows to achieve better than 1.6 W/m2K. 3 - SFS to support glazing and cladding framework fixings - fully filled with mineral wool insulation.

4 - Cement particle board fixed to outer face of SFS and 100mm Kingspan insulation to achieve 2.0 W/ m2K.

The Exchange

5 - Adjustable rotary connection bracket to support angled glazing units.

6 - Steel perimeter beam 7 - Steel arm with thermally broken connection to primary structure.

8 - ETFE facade structure 9 - ETFE fabric (Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene) woven with solar cells on the southern facing areas of the façade.

10 - Composite floor slab with profiled steel deck fixed transversely to primary steel beams 11 - In-screed under floor heating 12 - Ventilation ducts and services through steel beam openings.

Facade Arm Detail

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The Exchange

Structural Axonometric

The arrangement of the floorplate wrapped around an open atrium up the entire length of the building means that there is no core at the centre of the building to resist lateral forces.

Furthermore, any lateral force resisting elements in the form of a central core would have to be very wide as the tower is 276m tall. The primary structural strategy is informed by these constraints: a non-uniform steel perimeter-braced diagrid moves the lateral resisting structural elements to the perimeter of the building, freeing The Exchange

up the interior spaces. The diagrid is composed of perimeter columns arranged on a radial grid, a beam which winds up the perimeter of the building in line with the outer edge of the floorplate, and cross bracing to hold the columns in tension. A secondary reduced version of this structure hangs from the primary diagrid in the centre of the building to support the ‘inner’ side of the floor plates around the open atrium and the Googlevator multi-directional transportation system which is used to move around the building.

Sructural Axonometric

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US008395773B1 (12)

United States Patent

(10)

Fakename Jr.

(45)

Patent No.: Date of Patent

US 8,395,774 B1

Jul.8, 2023

ABSTRACT

(54)

LEVEL ADJUSTABLE SOLE

(76)

Inventor:

Jimmy Fakename Jr., 722 S. Orange Ave., Santa Ana, CA (US) 92701

(*)

Notice:

Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by 0 days.

(21)

Appl. No.: 11/749,090

(22)

Filed:

May 15, 2022

The Googlevator : a glass elevator transportation system for high speed travel around the North and local travel around the campus.

Every big technology campus has their own transport system. In Silicon Valley Google have brightly coloured GoogleBikes for their employees to use on campus. They also have the controversial Google Shuttle Bus system to pick up their employees for work – pretty environmentally considerate of them. However, the introduction of these bus stops to a neighbourhood coincides with rising house prices and increase evictions for the non-Googlerlocals.

With the GoogleNorth campus there is a lot more verticality than a Silicon Valley campus – due to the city centre location. As we know, Google’s employees cannot be distracted by the chore of climbing stairs so a glass lift network that connects the whole campus is envisaged.

The Googlevator is also the primary trasnportation system for the Exchange tower; multiple rails wind through the building and connect to the primary rail which winds around the edge of the floorplate facing into the atrium which runs up the length of the building.

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Googlevators can use facial recognition and IoT technology to transport employees to where they need to be without any manual input.

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KEY 1 - Rotary motor powered trolley 2 - Reinforced rails 3 - Heist to allow vertical adjustment to varying floor to floor distances.

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Patent

Googlevator

US008395773B1 (12)

United States Patent Fakename Jr.

(45)

Patent No.: Date of Patent

US 8,395,773 B1

Jul.8, 2023

ABSTRACT

(54)

LEVEL ADJUSTABLE SOLE

(76)

Inventor:

Jimmy Fakename Jr., 722 S. Orange Ave., Santa Ana, CA (US) 92701

(*)

Notice:

Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by 0 days.

(21)

Appl. No.: 11/749,089

(22)

Filed:

As the whole building is one looped floor plate, the floor slopes gently the whole way around the building. Illustrating the lengths Google is willing to go to achieve their ‘perfection’ the building is accompanied by a newly patented GoogleSole that allows users to walk normally on the sloped floor. Like Apple changing their accessories with every new release, The Exchange is not compatible with shoes from other suppliers and every user must wear Google’s product.

Inspired by the completely legit fact that mountain goats have two legs longer than the others so they can stand on the side of a hill, the GoogleSole uses localised geolocation monitoring to track every move their employees make adjust the sole of their shoe to expand or contract depending on the gradient of the slope they are standing on. To the user it would always feel like they are standing on a level surface.

May 15, 2022

A

(10)

B

3 7

4 1

2 8 6

FIG. 3 5

Patent

GoogleSole

KEY

1 - Adjustable levelling feet connected to stiff 2 - Stainless steel rotary ball joint 3 - Padded foam sole 4 - Stiff layer to spread the load of the levelling feet across the sole.

5 - Stiff layer.

6 - Control box containing RFID microchip and inertia monitor that syncs location and movement data with localised floor level data stored in Google’s system and adjusts levelling feet accordingly.

7 - Expandable foam folded sole cover.

8 - Springs in tension.

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GooglePower A waste to energy power station and the practice of Googology GooglePower is a waste to energy power station and temple of Googology. A religion, a cult or a science, Googology is the practice of serving your digital self with the ultimate aim of transhumanism and immortalism in cyberspace. The facility sits under a geodesic dome a utopian symbol tinged with anxiety about environmental catastrophe and presenting an image of literal and symbolic transparency.

Googology: Science or Religion?

Googology is a religion/ science founded by Google which promises eternal life in cyberspace by believers dedicating their physical life 1.0 to the generation of a digital self that will be immortalised in the GoogleCloud.

The Church of Googology power station sits within a paradise, a heaven on earth, under a stained glass dome where the temperature is always set at 21° C (the average in California). Because like any sensible god, society must be built in their image.

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Google Power

Googology

Google Power

Exploded Axonometric

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Is Google the closest we have ever come to experiencing a god?

Google is the closest thing to "Nowadays, the most interesting Google answers prayers. Ask an Omniscient (all-knowing) place in the world from a religious Google and Google will show perspective is not Syria or the you the way. entity in existence.

Bible Belt, but Silicon Valley.

That is where hi-tech gurus are Google is everywhere at once brewing for us amazing new (Omnipresent). religions that have little to do with God, and everything to do Hallowed be thy domain. with technology. They promise all the old prizes – happiness, peace, justice and eternal life in paradise – but here on Earth with the help of technology, rather than after death and with the help of supernatural beings.”

“Of course, this does not mean that these techno-religions will fulfil all their extravagant promises.

Religions spread themselves more by making promises than by keeping them." (thechurchofgoogle.org) https://www.(newstatesman.com/ politics/uk/2016/09/salvationalgorithm-god-technology-and-new21st-century-religions)

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Google Power

Googology

“Religion is anything that legitimises human norms and values by arguing that they reflect some superhuman order.”

GooglePower Roof Plan

Google Power

Dome Roof Plan

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Tipping hall

Waste Bunker The Processor The Grinder

The Cyclone

Air Locks

The Quench/ Wash Towers Ultra High Temperature Gasifier (G3) Baptism Pool The Desiccant Canisters The Compressors

Pressure Swing Adsorption Unit Final Compression + Fuel Cell

Electrical GenSet Flare

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Storage Tanks

Googology

Process

Gardens of Googology Plan

Google Power

Gardens of Googology Plan

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Google Power

Section

Google Power

Section

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Temple of Googology

Roof Plan

Context

Big Tech: Control

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Building Elements Context

Big Tech: Control Models

Building Elements Context

Big Tech: Control Models

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Context

Big Tech: Control

Architectural Storyboards This section journeys through a normal Tuesday on GoogleNorth campus.

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Morgan Wild

Alexander Gaul

Part II Architectural Assistant

Part II Architectural Assistant

morganellawild@gmail.com

alexanderstgaul@gmail.com

www.linkedin.com/in/morgan-wild

www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-gaul

07833251621

07981038491