Firm： Form4 Architecture

Type： Commercial › Office

STATUS： Built

SIZE： 100,000 sqft - 300,000 sqft

The Innovation Curve is a new workplace that is flexible and open and uses a dominant design element to celebrate the innovation process that is so often associated with its geographical location of Silicon Valley. Located on the edge of Stanford Research Park, it replaces Facebook’s most recent headquarters. The project’s four two-story buildings are arranged on the site to define an extensive central open space, free of cars, which have been moved below grade.

The proposed design recognizes and celebrates the essence of the research park: an innovative entrepreneurial spirit. If being an entrepreneur equates to being an individual, the architectural containers hosting these teams flirting with our shared tomorrow lend themselves to become built-up manifestation of the mindset of the people inhabiting it. This design de facto gives material form to a creative tension grounded in the ruthless reality of economically viable implementation. The sensuous mid-level blue horizontal ribbon shading element follows the shape of the classic R&D timeline; from creative spark, though trial and tribulation, to welcome success. The highs and lows of an idea within reach, yet to be perfected and fine-tuned, form the discreet points of a curve, jolting yet proceeding, and metaphorically bearing anticipation and anxiety. For this scheme, the innovation diagram is generative of the compound's urban appearance as well as its internal parti. To further activate the space, terraces break down the scale of the building along the inner campus to create places for people to work or meet.

In erecting a billboard of the innovation rollercoaster, the community is reminded of the peaks and valleys of effervescent thinking characteristic of the process of change.