苹果、脸书和谷歌的建筑秀

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The billion-dollar palaces of APPle， Facebook and Google

We know by now that the internet is a giant playpen， a landscape of toys， distractions and instant gratification， of chirps and squeaks and bright， shiny things – plus， to be sure， ugly， horrid beasties lurking in all the softness – apparently without horizon. Graphics – rounded corners， lower case， Google’s primary colours， Twitter’s birdie， Facebook’s shades of blue – enhance the innocence and infantilism. It is a world，as Jonathan Franzen once said， “so responsive to our wishes as to be， effectively， a mere extension of the self”. Until we chance on the bars of the playpen and find that there are places we can’t go and that it is in the gift of the grown-ups on the other side to set or move the limits to our freedom.

如今，我们把互联网比作一个巨大的婴儿围栏，乍看起来没有界限，到处是玩具，供人们消遣，获得片刻欢愉，那里啁啾雀跃，光彩夺目，自然也不乏丑陋、可恶的猫猫狗狗悄然潜伏在某个角落里。圆角图标、小写字母、谷歌标志的基色、推特小鸟儿及脸书图标的蓝色明暗，更显出几分天真和童趣。正如乔纳森·弗兰岑曾言：“这个世界体现出人们的愿望，简直堪称自我的延伸。”直到无意间碰到围栏边缘，才发现还有我们去不了的地方，一切要仰仗围栏外的“成人们”设定或改变我们的自由。

We’re talking here of virtual space. But those grown-ups， the tech giants， Apple，Facebook， Google and the rest， are also in the business of building physical billion-dollar enclaves for their thousands of employees. Here too they create calibrated lands of fun， wherein staff offer their lives， body and soul， day and night， in return for gyms， Olympic-sized swimming pools， climbing walls， basketball courts， running tracks and hiking trails， indoor football pitches， massage rooms and hanging gardens， performance venues， amiable art and lovable graphics. They have been doing this for a while – what is changing is the sheer scale and extravagance of these places.

我们这里讨论的是虚拟空间，但那些“成人们”——互联网界的科技巨头，苹果、脸书、谷歌等等，正为其成千上万名员工建立一个真正的亿元宫殿。在现实世界，他们精心打造了欢乐场所。员工们在此鞠躬尽瘁，身心俱疲，不舍昼夜，换来健身房、堪比奥运赛场的大号泳池、攀岩墙、篮球场、跑道、登山路、室内足球场、按摩房、空中花园、表演场以及亲切的艺术品和可爱的图画。如此这般已有一段时间了，改变的只是场地的规模和奢华程度。

For the tech giants are now in the same position as great powers in the past – the bankers of the Italian Renaissance， the skyscraper-builders of the 20th century， the Emperor Augustus， Victorian railway companies – whereby， whether they want to or not， their size and wealth find expression in spectacular architecture. As Deyan Sudjic， formerly of this parish and now director of theDesignMuseum， wrote in his bookThe Edifice Complex， the execution of architecture “has always been at the discretion of those with their hands on the levers of power”. Having as much sense of their own importance as those previous powers， tech companies probably don’t mind commissioning structures that define their time.

如今，科技巨头堪比旧时的商界霸主——意大利文艺复兴时期的银行家、20世纪摩天大楼的建造者、奥古斯都大帝及维多利亚时期的铁路公司。无论情愿与否，他们的规模和财富都体现在壮观的建筑之中。曾住在当地、现英国设计博物馆馆长迪耶·萨迪奇在《权力与建筑》一书中写道，营造建筑“总要听从可以撬动权力之人”。认为自己同前人一样权倾一时，科技公司兴许并不介意用建筑来定义属于他们的时代。

A clue to their ambitions lies in their choice of architects， who are at the very to an extremely famous end of the professional spectrum. They have， plainly， colossal resources， with the ability to do almost anything they like. They can have new materials invented， or make old ones perform as never before. They can build the biggest and most expensive workplaces yet seen. They can change cities.

他们的雄心壮志从挑选的建筑师中可见一斑，那些建筑师是专业领域内知名甚至如雷贯耳的人物。简单说，人家资源多，只要喜欢，没什么办不到的。他们可以使用最新发明的材料，或者创新原有材料的使用方式。他们可以建造史上最大、最昂贵的办公楼。他们甚至可以重塑城市。

They have already redefined “architecture” in the sense that the word can now refer to the structures of software and hardware. Now the old-fashioned version of architecture finds itself an adjunct of the new sort. One sign of the shifted balance of power is the fact that Apple， having commissioned the mighty Foster and Partners to design its new HQ， chose not to name them even after they hadunveiled the plans. The project is still not on the Foster website. The Apple brand had to come first.

他们已经改写了“建筑”的定义，既可以指硬件，也可以指软件。旧建筑理念已成为新式建筑的附属品了。从苹果公司委托福斯特建筑事务所为其设计新总部一事中，便可看出权力的转移。苹果宣布计划后都没有公布受托设计的公司名称。福斯特官网至今也未列出该项目，苹果品牌优先。

Most though not all of these new structures are in the gathering of towns， suburbs and small cities that go by the name of Silicon Valley. There is the Foster project， Apple Park in Cupertino， 2.8m sq ft in size and reportedly costing $5bn， at its centre a mile in circumference， visible from space， a metal and glass circle that is now nearly complete. There are the plannedGoogle headquarters in Mountain View and Londonby the high-ego， high-reputation pairing of Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick. Facebook has hired the New York office of OMA， the practice founded by Rem Koolhaas， to add to the Frank Gehry-designed complex in Menlo Park that was completed in 2015.

尽管并非所有、但多数新建筑都分布在硅谷中的城镇、郊区和小城市。福斯特的项目苹果公园位于库比蒂诺市，占地280万平方英尺，中心是个周长一英里、从太空中可以看到的金属和玻璃造的“圆圈”。公园已接近完工，据称耗资50亿美元。谷歌则计划在山景城和伦敦建总部，由比亚克·英格斯和托马斯·赫斯维克两位自负的顶级设计师联手打造。脸书聘请了雷姆·库哈斯创立的大都会建筑事务所纽约总部建筑师弗兰克·盖里，2015年建成位于门罗帕克市的新建筑。

The one that commands most attention， and has done since the designs were unveiled in 2011， is the Apple/Foster circle， built on a site vacated by the waning empire of Hewlett Packard， which as it happens was the company that gave the teenage Steve Jobs his first break. According toWiredmagazine， the building preoccupied Jobs in his last months， and he would spend his precious time on five- or six-hour meetings on its design. In June 2011， visibly ailing， he appeared in person in front of a starstruck Cupertino city council， with members of the audience snapping him with what now look like Jurassic cameras， to convince them of its merits. He didn’t have to try too hard.

最引人注目的莫过于福斯特建造的苹果公园。自2011年提出设计后，便开始着手建造，场地是业绩每况愈下的惠普公司腾出来的。惠普恰好是让少年史蒂夫·乔布斯赚了第一桶金的公司。据《连线》杂志报道，乔布斯生命最后数月中仍心心念念着苹果公园的设计，他甚至每天抽出宝贵的五六个小时开会，讨论设计方案。2011年6月，他拖着病体亲自来到群星璀璨的库比蒂诺市政厅，听众用古老的相机拍他，现在看起来好像侏罗纪时代的东西。乔布斯力推苹果公园的好处，他本不必如此卖力。

“We’ve had some great architects to work with，” he said， “some of the best in the world I think， and we’ve come up with a design that puts 12，000 people in one building.” The audience gasped. He’d seen “office parks with lots of buildings” but they “get boring pretty fast”. So he proposed， introducing a metaphor that has since stuck to the design like dust to a MacBook screen， something “a little like a spaceship landed” with a “gorgeous courtyard in the middle”.

乔布斯说：“我认为我们和世界上最棒的建筑师一同工作，设计出了一幢可以容纳12000人的建筑。”观众们惊叹不已。他见过“许多楼组成的办公园区”，但它们“很快变得索然无味”。因而他提议建造“一艘着陆的宇宙飞船”，“中间有个壮观的庭院”，随后这个比喻成了设计的代名词，就像灰尘牢牢吸在苹果电脑的屏幕上一样。

“It’s a circle and so it’s curved all the way round，” he said， which “as you know if you build things is not the cheapest way to build something. There’s not a straight piece of glass on this building.” At the same time the height would never exceed four storeys – “we want the whole place human-scale”. There would be 6，000 trees on the 150-acre site， selected with the help of a “senior arborist from Stanford who’s very good with indigenous trees around this area”.

“它是一个圆形，所有地方都是弯曲的，”他说。“你知道，这样建东西并不是最廉价的，建筑上没有一片直的玻璃。”同时，建筑不会高过四层楼，“我们希望建筑人性化”。在占地150英亩的建筑中将种植6000株树木。一位来自斯坦福的资深树艺家对当地林木十分了解，他会帮助苹果挑选树木。

When a council member said that “the word spectacular is an understatement”， Jobs didn’t demur. “I think we do have a shot at building the best office building in the world，” he said. “I really do think that architecture students will come here to see this， I think it could be that good.” He batted away mild requests for a few perks for the neighbourhood – free wifi， opening an Apple store， mitigating the increase in traffic – and in the nicest possible way reminded everyone that “we’re the largest taxpayer in Cupertino， so we’d like to continue to stay here and pay taxes.” If the city asked for too much， in other words，Applewould decamp to a rival municipality.

一位市议员说，“说起壮观都算谦虚。”乔布斯并未反驳。“我认为我们可能建成世上最好的办公楼，”他说。“我真心认为建筑系学生会来观摩，它就是那么好。”他没有回答是否能为社区带来小甜头的请求，如开放免费Wi-Fi、开一家苹果商店，或是缓解城市交通压力。他以最善意的方式提醒所有人， “我们是库比蒂诺最大的纳税人，我们希望待在这里，继续纳税。”换句话说，如果这个城市对我们要求太多，我们完全可以把苹果公园搬到另一个与库比蒂诺竞争的城市去。

The mayor waved an iPad 2 （which also looks Jurassic now） and said how much his daughter loved it. “Your technologies really make everybody proud，” said another council member. “Well thanks，” said Jobs， “we’re proud to be in Cupertino too.” “Thanks，” she gurgled back， like a giddy teenager. In due course the project was approved.

库比蒂诺市市长挥舞着iPad2（现在看来也像个老古董），说他女儿对它爱不释手。“你们的技术让所有人骄傲。”另一位市议员说。乔布斯说：“谢谢，我们也为在库比蒂诺市安家感到骄傲。” “谢谢。”市议员咯咯笑着说，像个激动的少年。建造项目如期通过审批。

Apple Park is the shape of infinity and eternity， of mausoleums and temples

Jobs was in fact understating the circle’s exceptionalness. Recently Steven Levy， a journalist forWired， was let through Apple’s PR palisadesto look inside the nearly-finished building. He described a high-precision Xanadu， a feel-goodSpectrebase， on which Lord Foster and his team were assisted by Apple’s famed chief design officer – also， as it happens， British-born – Sir Jonathan Ive.

苹果公园凝固了无限与永恒，如陵墓和寺庙般威严，事实上乔布斯没有表达出环形建筑的与众不同之处。最近，《连线》杂志记者史蒂芬·列维获准进入苹果公园，近距离参观即将建成的苹果公园。他称这里是高度逼真的的仙境华厦，舒适宜人的幽灵基地。福斯特勋爵及其团队的设计得到苹果首席设计师乔纳森·伊夫的帮助，巧合的是，伊夫也出生在英国。

After a drive down a pristine 755-foot long tunnel， clad in specially designed and patented tiles， he discovered a world of whiteness， greenery and silver， with a 100，000 sq ft fitness centre and a cafe that can serve 4，000 at once， with the 1，000-seat Steve Jobs theatre， surmounted by a 165ft-wide glass cylinder， for Apple’s famous product launches， and with a landscape designed to emulate a national park.

驱车经过775英尺长的古朴隧道，隧道墙壁铺着特别设计并拥有专利的瓷砖，随后列维进入一个白色、绿色和银色的世界。那里有占地10万平方英尺的健身房，可同时容纳4000人的咖啡厅，1000个座位的乔布斯剧院架在165英尺高的玻璃圆柱上，用于举行大名鼎鼎的苹果发布会，景观模仿了国家公园的设计。

It is a place where trees have been transplanted from the Mojave desert， where the aluminium door-handles have been through multiple prototypes to achieve their perfect form， where the stairs use fire-control systems borrowed from yachts， where the extensive glass has been specially treated to achieve exactly the desired level of transparency and whiteness， whereeven a new kind of pizza box that stops the contents going soggy has been invented and patentedfor the company cafe. The doorways have perfectly flat thresholds because， according to a construction manager reported by Reuters， “if engineers had to adjust their gait when entering the building， they risked distraction from their work”.

苹果公园中的树从莫哈维沙漠移栽过来，铝制门把手经过多轮设计力求完美，楼梯采用了游艇防火系统，大块玻璃经过特殊处理，精确地满足设计要求的透明度和洁净度，连咖啡厅的新式披萨包装盒都申请了专利，防止披萨发潮。入口廊道十分平整，路透社引用一名建筑经理的话称，“如果工程师们进门时要调整步伐，可能会从工作中分心。”

In life Jobs was ferocious about the detail； since his death his followers have striven to be true to his spirit. He specified how the timber wall-linings should be cut and at what time of year， to minimise its sap content. There is a yoga room， reports Levy， that is “covered in stone， from just the right quarry in Kansas， that’s been carefully distressed， like a pair of jeans， to make it look like the stone at Jobs’s favourite hotel in Yosemite”. There are the sliding glass doors to the cafe， four storeys or 85 feet high， each weighing 440，000 lbs – nearly 200 tonnes –， that open and close with the help of near-noiseless underground mechanisms. Apple Park uses the largest， heaviest single pieces of glass ever installed on a building， with the added complication of being curved.

生活中的乔布斯对细节要求极其严格。他去世后，员工们仍不忘初心。乔布斯详细规定了木质墙衬取材时该如何切割及在什么季节切割，保证木材汁液含量最低。据列维报道，公园里有间瑜伽室用石材铺成。石头从堪萨斯优良石场挑选，经精心打磨，就像处理一条牛仔裤，让其看起来和优山美地乔布斯最喜欢的一家酒店的石头相仿。咖啡馆装有滑动玻璃门，有四层楼（85英尺）高，每块玻璃重达44万磅（近200吨），开合由地下机械辅助进行，几乎没有声音。苹果公园使用了建筑用最大和最重的单块玻璃，另采用复杂工艺让玻璃弯曲。

It is certainly a wonder of our age， though to what end is an open question. Jonathan Ive toldWiredthat the main aims were the connection and collaboration it would allow between employees. For Foster it is “a beautiful object descended on this verdant， luxurious landscape … a true utopian vision”. One of its aims is to inspire future Apple workers with its perfection and attention to detail， to set a standard for them to follow in their work. Tim Cook， Apple’s CEO， called it a “100-year decision”.

这无疑是我们这个时代的奇迹，尽管其用处何在见仁见智。乔纳森·伊夫对《连线》杂志说，设计的主要目的是增强员工间的连通与合作。对福斯特来说，这是“降落在绿草如茵之地的美丽飞船，真正的乌托邦”。其宗旨之一是激发未来的苹果员工追求完美，重视细节，树立标杆让他们在工作中学习。苹果首席执行官蒂姆·库克称之为“百年大计”。

Ever since the design was unveiled， however， it has provoked scepticism. The architecture critic of theLA Timescalled ita “retrograde cocoon”， “doggedly old-fashioned”. As a perfect and excluding piece of modernist geometry， set within lush planting and dependent on large amounts of car parking， it looks oddly likea corporate HQ of the 1950s or 60s， something that IBM or Bell Labs might have built，which you would have thought is exactly the look Apple wouldn’t want. And a circle is a frozen form， hard to modify or augment. At any given point， the relationship to the rest is much the same as at any other point， which seems to work against Ive’s hopes for communication and spontaneity.

然而，自设计方案公之于众以来，引发诸多质疑。《洛杉矶时报》一位建筑评论家称其为“退化的茧”，“陈腐老套”。一个完美且独一无二的现代主义几何结构，坐落在茂盛的植物间，拥有大量的停车位，这有点奇怪，看上去倒像上世纪五六十年代的公司总部，也许IBM或诺基亚贝尔实验室会建成这样，你想不到这竟是苹果建的。圆形建筑是“固定”的，一旦建成很难再调整或增建。取建筑上的任意一点，与建筑其他部分关系都是一致的，看起来违背了伊夫希望增加员工交流的希望。

Many of the greatest inventions in modern technology have been made in rough and ready， easy-to-adapt spaces – in the garages， front rooms and borrowed office desks where Apple，Googleand others were hatched and in Building 20， the big wooden shed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where major advances were made in linguistics， nuclear science， acoustics and computing， to name but a few.

现代技术领域许多重大发明都是在简陋现成、适应性强的空间中发明出来的。苹果、谷歌和其他一些知名公司便在车库、客厅或是借来的办公桌上孵化出来。在麻省理工学院的一幢大型木棚——20号建筑内，语言学、核物理学、声学和计算科学等学科取得重大进展。

And while it’s impossible for a company the size of Apple to recreate that exact spirit in its workplace， the big circle does look over-determined and too complete， as well as expensive and slow to build. Foster’s “beauty” and “utopia” may not make the best environment for fast-moving invention. As for Cook’s 100-year ambition， this seems strange and hubristic – as the decline of Hewlett Packard shows， there is little reason to think that any tech company can last that long， in which case the Apple circle will， like the crumbling art deco skyscrapers of Detroit， be magnificently redundant.

虽然对于苹果这样的大公司，不可能在工作场所中再造这种精神，可大圆环的确雄心勃勃，且追求卓越，却也耗资巨大、进度缓慢。福斯特的“美丽”和“乌托邦”或许不能为快速创造发明提供最好的设计环境。至于库克的百年目标，这看起来怪异且傲慢。正如惠普的衰落表明，没有理由认为哪家科技公司能延续那么久。这样看来，苹果环将同底特律濒临倒塌的装饰艺术大楼一样，华丽却一无是处。

There is another line of criticism， which is that those awed and tax-hungry members of Cupertino city council didn’t push hard enough for the help that their community needs. If the presence of Apple is mostly an immense boon for them it also brings pressure on housing and transport， creating traffic jams and long commutes and pushing the median price of a home in Cupertino to nearly $2m. The design writer Allison Arieffrecently argued in theNew York Timesthat the project shows a “blatant disregard not only for the citizens of Cupertino but also for the functionality of the region”. It should， she says， have made more effort to connect to public transport and the city should try harder to address the housing need that Apple’s presence generates.

另一种批评认为，库比蒂诺市府那些唯唯诺诺、渴求税收的官员并未对满足社区需求付出努力。如果说苹果公司对他们来说是巨大的“恩惠”，同样给当地住房和交通带来压力，如交通堵塞、长时间通勤，以及将本市原本中等的房价水平提升到接近两百万美元。最近，设计专栏作家艾里森·阿瑞弗在《纽约时报》上称，该工程“不仅对库比蒂诺市居民，还是对当地功能的公然漠视”。她说，苹果应当尽力融入到当地的交通环境中，库比蒂诺市也努力解决苹果公司产生的住房需求。

It doesn’t often pay to bet against Apple’s judgment， and there may be intelligence in the project that is not visible in the available information. The company’s wealth and power may in any case be enough to counteract any unhelpfulness in its architecture， but Apple Park looks like the sort of splendid monument that empires build for themselves – Lutyens’s buildings for the British Raj in Delhi， the skyscrapers that went up on the cusp of the Wall Street crash – after they have passed their supremacy. It may also be governed by excessive if understandable respect for Jobs. It is a place imbued with his biography and his dreams. They call it “Steve’s gift”. It had better not be Steve’s millstone.

不看好苹果的判断常常得不偿失，该项目中或许还有现有信息无法获知的智能之处。在任何情况下，苹果的财富和权力都足以抵消建筑的无益之处，可苹果公园看上去像是过气的帝国为自己建造的华丽丰碑，正如勒琴斯在德里为英属印度建造的摩天大楼，建造之时恰逢华尔街崩盘。这也受制于对乔布斯过分的尊重，尽管这种尊重可以理解。苹果公园处处体现了乔布斯的经历和梦想，他们将之称为“史蒂夫的礼物”，但愿不是“史蒂夫的磨盘”。

It is， at all events， the project against which other tech companies’ proposals want to define themselves. They want to be the things that it is not. The official story of the Facebook/Gehry collaboration is that Mark Zuckerberg was wary of the architect’s celebrity and the latter had to convince him of his ability to deliver the project – with the help of Gehry’s in-house software – more cheaply and efficiently than his rivals. The finished version is from the rough-edged and rumpus-room schools of tech HQ design， with a huge open-plan office containing 2，800 workers and splashy， colourful works by local artists. “The building itself is pretty simple and isn’t fancy. That’s on purpose，” said Zuckerberg. “We want our space to feel like a work in progress. When you enter our buildings， we want you to feel how much left there is to be done in our mission to connect the world.”

无论如何，其他科技公司的方案都与苹果项目针锋相对，他们要成为和苹果不同的东西。脸书和盖里合作的官方说法是，马克·扎克伯格担心盖里知名度不够，后者必须让扎克伯格相信他的能力，在盖里内部软件帮助下，比对手更为低廉且高效地完成项目。最终选择是一个粗线条、娱乐房风格的科技总部，内部有容纳2800人的大型敞开式办公区，有当地艺术家色彩斑斓的作品。“建筑本身十分简洁，没有新奇之处，我们故意如此，”扎克伯格说，“我们希望办公空间让人感觉一直在改善。当你进入建筑时，我们希望你能感受到这里要做的只有与世界相连这一使命。”

Shohei Shigematsu， the partner at OMA New York in charge of Facebook’s latest expansion， Willow Campus， says that “our mission was not to provide iconic architecture but also regional and social thinking”. He and his client， he says， want to “integrate with community and provide community amenity”， to provide “the things that the community desperately wants” – a grocery store， open space， 1，500 homes of which 15% will be offered at below market rents， a hotel， greenways， residential walks， shopping streets. “Facebook is the perfect company，” Shigematsu also says， “their mission is to connect people， and network is a word that is virtual but also physical.” So he wants to apply that mission to “urban ambitions for connectivity in the Bay Area”.

负责脸书柳树园区最新扩建过程的OMA纽约总部合伙人之一重松象平说，“项目目的并非为脸书提供象征性建筑，而是提供地区及社会思维。”他说他和他的客户想“与当地社区融合，并为社区提供生活便利”，“提供社区最需要的东西”——食品杂货店、开放空间、低于市场价15%的1500所住房、一家酒店、林荫道、步行道和商业街。重松象平还说，“脸书是完美的公司。他们的宗旨是与当地居民联通，互联网不仅仅是一个虚拟的词汇，现实中也可以做到。”于是，他想将这一宗旨运用到“湾区互联互通的城市雄心之中”去。

He wants to re-activate a disused rail corridor at the edge of the site as a cycling track， a pedestrian route and a possible line for a Facebook shuttle that can also be used by the public. He wants to “undo the corporate fortress-like approach”， although he acknowledges that a vast company will always have secrets and that much of its territory will be out of bounds to the general public.

重松象平想重启工地旁的一条废弃铁路，作为骑行车道和人行道使用，可能还将作为脸书班车专用道，公众也可使用。尽管他承认一家大型企业总会有一些秘密，公司很多地区非公莫入，但他希望“打破公司堡垒”。

The imagery published so far shows generically pleasant parks and streets， of the kind that well-mannered urbanists have been generating for more than three decades， with none of the provocation， surprise and signature perversity that you usually get with OMA projects. Shigematsu says he is happy to accept “a certain level of banality” in the appearance – it is the “large-scale thinking” that matters to him.

目前已公布的建造设想包括宜人的大众化的公园和街道，三十多年来，有品位的城市规划者常会如是建造，与以往OMA项目的不同，风格不挑衅、不令人吃惊，没有其标志性的叛逆。重松象平说他乐意接受表面看来“一定程度的平庸”，他认为重要的是“大思维”。

Google want something else again. They’re definitely not afraid of icons. After considering various architects – Zaha Hadid， for example – they shotgunned Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingels’s practice， BIG， into a marriage. It’s a striking idea， like a billionaire hiring Miley CyrusandBritney Spears to perform at his sprog’s 18th birthday. Heatherwick and Ingels are among the younger recruits to the ranks of iconists， unabashed showmen， purveyors of WTF spectaculars untrammelled by the intellectual scruples of older architects. One of the two might be considered ample for any one project， but then businesses like Google don’t play by normal rules when it comes to hiring designers， or indeed much else.

谷歌再次想出其不意，他们绝对不害怕标新立异。在考虑了包括扎哈·哈迪德在内的多位设计师后，决定把赫斯维克工作室和比亚克·英格尔斯事务所BIG拉到一起。这是个惊人的想法，就像某亿万富翁邀请麦莉·塞勒斯和布兰妮·斯皮尔斯为自家孩子的18岁生日表演。赫斯维克和英格斯是新晋偶像派，无所畏惧的作秀者，“这什么玩意”的奇观制造者，风格全不顾忌老一辈建筑师的条框。二人任选其一就足以胜任任何一个项目了，可论及雇佣设计师或许多其他事情上，谷歌这样的公司不按常理出牌。

At Mountain View， where permission was recently granted to proceed， a huge roof is proposed， both mountainous and tent-like， with upward-curving openings –“smile-shaped clerestories”– for viewing the sky. Beneath its capacious shelter， on a raised open deck， hundreds if not thousands of Googlers will be doing their stuff. The next level down a publicly accessible route runs through， part of a programme of engaging with the local community that also includes a “public plaza” for group tai chi and whatever. It is framed by “oval oak thickets”.

在山景城，建造计划刚刚通过审批，谷歌提议建造一个巨大屋顶，像庞大的帐篷，有着向上卷曲的“微笑型”天窗，供人们欣赏天空。在宽大的屋顶下，隆起的露天平台上，即使不说上千名，也可容纳数百名谷歌员工办公。下层是可供公众使用的道路，这也是谷歌与当地社区融合的做法之一。谷歌还会建“公共广场”，供居民打太极或是进行其他活动。广场将由“椭圆形橡树丛”构成。

If Apple Park seems aloof and extraterrestrial – despite the fact that quite a lot of its landscape is open to the public – then Facebook and Google want you to know how much， like street jugglers or mime artists， they want to engage you. But there are also similarities between all these projects， such as the all-embracing nature of their ambitions. Each campus is a self-contained universe where everything – the species of vegetation， the graphics， the food in the cafe， the programming of events， the architecture， is determined by the management. They make their own weather.

如果说苹果公园看起来形单影只，仿若天外来客，虽说也有许多场地向公众开放，相比而言，脸书和谷歌希望展现得亲民，就像街头杂耍或哑剧艺人。但所有建造项目都有相似之处，譬如包纳一切的雄心。每个园区都是自成一体的小宇宙，植被种类、装饰、咖啡馆中的食物、活动设计及整体建筑，一切都由管理层决定。他们决定了阴晴雨雪。

Under the Google tent or inside the Apple circle there is little but googleness or appleness. There is nature but – despite the meticulous selection of native plants – it is of an abstract， managed kind. There is art， but it is drained of the power to shock and subvert， leaving only diversion and reassurance. There is architecture but， notwithstanding the high degree of invention that goes into materials， it finds it hard to shed the quality of computer renderings， the sense that buildings are made of a kind of digistuff， which could as well be one thing or another. Even when the corporations reach out to their communities， to use the preferred PR terminology， the rest of the world is a hazy， ill-defined entity， a mist in the background of the computer-generated images.

在谷歌大帐篷或苹果公园中，到处充斥着谷歌和苹果气息。其间有自然，尽管精心种植了当地植物，但所谓“自然”是抽象和经过设计的。其间有艺术，但失去了震慑人的力量，只能供人消遣，让人舒心。其间有建筑，尽管许多新发明得以实现，但仍难摆脱计算机设计的感觉，好像整幢楼都由数码玩具堆积出来的，这些东西替换成其他的零件也没问题。用公关偏爱的术语说，即使企业接触到当地社区，世界其他地方仍是朦胧的、定义不明的实体，是计算机制造的图景后的一团迷雾。

These panoptical worlds are a function of the sheer scale of the corporations， but they also reflect their mindset. It has been pointed out thattech campuses resemble hippie communes of the 1960sin their apparent egalitarianism， their illusion that you can go back to nature， make your own rules， liberate yourself with science and share everything. Physically， Google’s big roof echoes the geodesic domes that hippies put up in their rural retreats.

这些全景世界是庞大公司的一个功能，但也体现了它们的思维模式。有人指出，科技园区很像二十世纪六十年代的嬉皮士群体，显然体现出平等主义原则，幻想着重返自然，自己制定规则，用科学解放自己，并分享一切。物理上说，谷歌的大屋顶回应了嬉皮士在乡村隐居处搭建的网格穹顶。

While their sci-fi is strangely dated， culturally it makes sense. As the author Fred Turner has argued inFrom Counterculture to Cyberculture， radical Californian ideas of the 1960s were， with added profit motive， converted into radical Californian technologies of recent decades. And as has been belatedly dawning， there are limits to the sharing， equality and freedom， particularly when the intellectual property and business strategies of the tech giants are at stake.

尽管他们的科幻作品时代感怪异，可从文化上说是有道理的。作家弗莱德·特纳在《从反文化到网络文化》一书中表示，二十世纪六十年代激进的加利福尼亚思想，加上利益驱动，最近几十年彻底转变为激进的加利福尼亚技术。正如转变姗姗来迟，分享、平等和自由也是有限度的，尤其当科技巨头的知识产权和商业策略说了算时。

Their architecture gives form to these contradictions， to the combinations of openness and control and of freedom and barriers. They are perfect diagrams of the apparent equality and actual inequality of the tech sphere， where impermeable sePTAdivide those in the inner circles from the rest. There is inequality everywhere， of course， but the tech trick is to pretend that there isn’t.

他们的建筑导致了这些矛盾——开放与限制、自由与障碍。在科技领域，表面看来平等，实则不平等，圈内人与圈外人之间有一道不可穿透的隔膜，建筑堪称完美诠释。当然，到处都存在不平等，但技术圈设法假装那里不存在。

Sometimes tech HQs find themselves in the middle of big cities， rather than the compliant sprawl of Silicon Valley， which causes them to modify but not abandon their hippie-commune mentality. Amazon has chosen to situate itself in downtown Seattle， where it is believed to occupy 15-20% of the available office space， which allows it to boast that 20% of its 25，000 employees walk to work. To its fairly anodyne assembly of office blocks， it has just added the Spheres， an urban Eden Project of interlocking bubbles， where its employees will wander， in Costa Rican temperatures， among tropical forests and waterfalls.

有时，科技公司总部身处大城市，而非处于杂乱扩张的硅谷中，这让他们改造而非放弃嬉皮士群体心态。亚马逊选择将总部建在西雅图市中心，据称占据当地15%-20%的可利用办公空间，亚马逊夸口全公司25000名员工中，将近20%可以走着上班。亚马逊最近在朴素的办公大楼前放置了几个球体，这是城市版伊甸园工程，球泡间相互连接，员工可以在热带森林和瀑布中漫步，感受哥斯达黎加的温度。

At King’s Cross in London pressure of space has obligedthe stacking-up of Google’s campusinto an 11-storey， one-million-square-foot structure as long as the Shard is tall. Here the fun and games of the inside – a promenade that ascends past cafes and fabulous sports facilities to a rooftop landscape of “headland”， “fields”， “garden” and “plateau” – are compressed into an exterior that takes its cue from the somewhat po-faced regularity of office blocks around it， and from the repeating lines of the railway tracks down one side. These rhythms then get jiggered， as if the internal energy can’t be contained any longer.

在伦敦国王十字街火车站，迫于空间限制，谷歌只能把总部建成11层，100万平方英尺，和碎片大厦一样高。这里内部的休闲游戏设施被压缩到外部空间去，一条跨过咖啡区和极棒的运动设施的步行道通向屋顶“高台”、“开阔地”、“花园”和“高原”景观，融入周围有点一本正经的办公楼和伸向一边的重复铁轨线路。这些节奏随后跳动起来，仿若内部的能量无法遏制了。

The proposed building is one of the more convincing architectural designs so far by either BIG or Heatherwick， in which the encounter of campus and metropolis generates compression and tension， pushing and pulling， action and reaction. It is also a decisive structure， unafraid of its scale， amid the more hesitant blocks around， which is something the area needs. But it is still inward-looking， offering a conventional office entrance plus an array of retail units to the street. If the same can be said of other office buildings nearby， one could have hoped that the force of Google could have achieved more.

该建筑设计是BIG或赫斯维克迄今为止比较令人信服的设计之一，园区和城市相遇产生了压迫和张力，有推有拉，有行动，有反应。这也是一个果断的建筑，处在周遭建筑包围中，不害怕规模不够，这正是当地所需要的。但建筑仍然是内向型的，建造了一个传统的办公楼入口及一排沿街商店。要是附近的另一个办公楼也能做到这点的话，人们希望谷歌的力量应该成就更大。

When Microsoft was in its pomp it was happy to occupy a bland scattering of low buildings on the edge of Seattle. It still does. It’s also striking that for all its fame Silicon Valley makes little impression on the visual consciousness of the world – there’s not a strong sense of what it actually looks like. Until now it has lacked landmarks. But that much power and that much money will not always be happy to be unobtrusive. We are only just beginning to see the ways in which it can change the landscape of cities.

微软如日中天时，乐意在西雅图边缘占用一片平淡无奇的低矮房子，现在仍然如此。同样令人惊叹的是，硅谷享有世界盛誉，却未曾在世界的视觉意识方面给人们留下深刻印象，硅谷到底什么样，人们印象不深。直到现在，它也没有一个地标建筑。可既然有那么大的权力，那么多钱，不会总愿意默默无闻的。我们才刚刚开始见识科技公司如何改变城市景观。