Google’s headquarters or fondly known as Googleplex required an unique design brief. It needed to “balance its utopian desire for transparency with its very real need for privacy.” L.A.-based design firm Clive Wilkinson Architects negotiated a steep learning curve to understand the way Google works and then design spaces to optimize their performance. The design was a mix of open spaces that we so identify with Google and enclosed private spaces that engineers need to code furiously.

However, after spending time with Page and Brin and the Google engineers that would occupy the building, Wilkinson realized that he was dealing with a distinctly different species of personnel. “We’ve always worked with people who were a mix of left and right brain,” Wilkinson says, “but engineers are very left brain. They might work in teams, but they require a high level of concentration; they sit in front of the computer and crunch formulas in the most extraordinary way.”

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