Google 237 MPD

Inspired by this legacy of innovation, Google has transformed the building into a workplace that embodies state-of-the-art regenerative design. For the renovation, the design team developed a comprehensive program of signage and environmental graphics that nods to the building’s history and points the way to a sustainable future.

The team worked closely on 237 MPD with IA Architects, the designers behind the revitalization. The 250,000-square-foot complex is the world’s largest Living Building Challenge (LC) Materials Petal Certified renovation project and is built to LEED v4 Platinum, Zero Carbon standards. This extends to the signage program, which features materials like reused wood and decarbonized paint and was completed using a high percentage of local fabricators. 

For the environmental graphics, the designers wanted to create a system that did not feel like an extension of the familiar Google branding, but rather captured the sense of creativity within the company. The signage draws on and celebrates the origins of 237 MPD to create a unique sense of place for the headquarters as a “computing world.” Built of patterns of lines and blocks, the graphics nod to the technology of dot matrix displays from the early CDC mainframe and super computer systems, where grids of tiny dots make up characters, images and patterns. These lines and stripes also suggest the cuts on computer punch cards, and the concept of words formed of individual graphic elements evokes the idea of a “cloud” of data and information.

The typography repurposes the font Intersect in letterforms built of lines; the designers extended the approach to a series of custom icons. The type becomes physical in supergraphic letters built of bands of patterns that extrude from the walls. These bars echo the existing elements in the Brutalist corporate architecture of the 1960s building, like the mullions and spandrels in the façade. The designers conducted tests to open up the apertures in the serrated letterforms but still keep them legible. 

A landmark sign outside announces the “237” address, with the block-like bars pushing through the sides of the column to form a sculptural totem. Above the main entrance, “237 MPD” extends from the building’s facade in a dimensional marquee. Inside, the Google logo extrudes from the wall in a large-scale installation made of reused wood.

As part of the wayfinding, each zone of 237 MPD features a different color from the Google brand palette––red, green, yellow and blue––and identified with graphic installations of dimensional type that wrap around walls and staircases. The system carries through to signage that brands different areas within the headquarters, such as office canteens The Counter and the appropriately named Punch Card, along with the campus station for G Bikes.

Design Team

Pentagram

Photo Credits

Jun Park

Open Date

June 1, 2022