Timber Tech: MGA’s Google HQ Offers a Total Vision for New Green Architecture

The jury and the public have had their say — feast your eyes on the winners of Architizer's 12th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.

Right now, the British Standards Institute (BSI), Colombia’s ICONTEC, and experts from around 170 national standards agencies have a huge job on their hands. An independently verifiable system for measuring net zero needs to be presented at COP30 next year, and the lay of the land today is a mixture of confusion, chaos and confidence tricks. At best, the ‘carbon market’ has had a turbulent time over the past decade. Meaningless credits have done enough to damage trust in a sector most people have never fully understood, and even buying legitimate offsets raises massive questions about overall legitimacy. 

How can we ever hope to rebalance our planet’s atmospheric content, necessary for it to continue supporting life over the coming millennia, if we’re not actually addressing the root cause? Instead, we’re paying into piecemeal projects as part of a broader corporate social responsibility directive, which is also part of a sales angle. Without sounding cynical, it’s easy to feel very cynical. 

However, a singular truth is always worth remembering — everything we build from here on should use as few resources as possible, using the most environmentally friendly materials and processes. This is an approach the famously climate-aligned MGA | Michael Green Architecture took for Google’s new home in Sunnyvale, California. A strikingly angular five-story office building, like the BSI, faced a monumental challenge helping bring down the sizeable footprint of a tech giant while also setting new standards in the architecture industry  — for biophilic and structural design, construction techniques, material sourcing and carbon reduction.

Google Borregas by MGA | Michael Green Architecture, Sunnyvale, California | Jury and Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Workspace; Jury Winner, Architecture + Wood, 12th Annual A+Awards

The pilot project is the fruit of five years of rigorous research and development alongside Google, in collaboration with SERA Architects and XL construction. A departure from its typical steel, glass and concrete neighbors in Silicon Valley, MGA has used mass timber, timber-glass, cross-laminated timber and glulam throughout their LEED Platinum structure (materials we’ve featured numerous times in projects boasting comparatively low embodied carbon). Overall, a whole-building life cycle analysis has shown that the project’s global warming potential is 47% lower than the baseline and 96% lower when biogenic carbon sequestration is accounted for.

An ‘envelope’ filter system featuring closed-cavity skin, wooden blinds and high performance glass means temperature and light levels are responsive and climate control comes with a reduced energy footprint. Analysis of energy and daylighting informed the building massing and façade at a 35% reduction from baseline. The amount of natural light flooding in also forms part of wider biophilic design principles primarily employed for staff welfare and wellbeing — another being the siting, in a quiet landscape of local fauna, with the intention of building a connection between employees and nature. Again, it’s a case of what’s better for the planet is better for us, too.

Google Borregas by MGA | Michael Green Architecture, Sunnyvale, California | Jury and Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Workspace; Jury Winner, Architecture + Wood, 12th Annual A+Awards

As MGA Principal Natalie Telewiak put it, the project “promotes health, connects to nature, and addresses the global need for repeatable, affordable, and sustainable new buildings.” This scalable solution is an ambitious effort on the part of the Vancouver-based firm to create a prototype for more sustainable — in an expanded and conscientious use of the term — workplaces in the future.

Natural materials are blended perfectly with views over surrounding landscapes the building actively complements with its earthy, timber look and feel. Cantilevers create covered areas, speaking to the less uniform aesthetics we find everyday in nature. This variety is mirrored on the inside, where mixed single and double height areas connect through a four story atrium. Here, daylight is again used to maximum effect with a timber-glass skylight accentuating the feeling of not quite being indoors.

Google Borregas by MGA | Michael Green Architecture, Sunnyvale, California | Jury and Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Workspace; Jury Winner, Architecture + Wood, 12th Annual A+Awards

Reuse and circularity are also high on the agenda, serving as a reminder that redesigning, redeveloping and renovating alone are not enough to redeem a carbon-addicted industry; while better than demolition, an entirely new way of thinking about sustainability is required. So many buildings desperately need bringing up to modern efficiency and sustainability standards, and if not done in a future-oriented manner, retrofitting will surely be required again later on. Not so at Google Borregas; the tech company’s commercial flagship has essentially been future-proofed.

Floor plans are made to be fully reconfigured and so can be adapted to suit myriad purposes and phases of the business cycle, a decision that speaks to the green agenda as much as an understanding that in industries like tech staffing levels can fluctuate wildly. New departments will be born, deep recessions will hit again in the future.

Timber detailing at Google Borregas by MGA | Michael Green Architecture, Sunnyvale, California | Jury and Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Workspace; Jury Winner, Architecture + Wood, 12th Annual A+Awards

There are greater challenges at play here, too. MGA’s blueprint reflects a major corporation taking responsibility for the footprint of its estate, and the mental and physical health of staff — values that are both symbolized and enacted in the building’s plan and functions. Of course, the fusing of nature with technology is also symbolic. These ideas can sometimes feel at odds with multinational globalized business culture as a whole, and if there’s a lot of ground to make up in the court of public opinion for companies with more GDP than entire nations, there’s an even bigger hill to climb in terms of perceptions of environmental accountability.

At Google, this is particularity pronounced. The onset of AI has sent energy consumption soaring across the sector, and according to Bloomberg the company is now warming the planet 48 times faster than it was in 2019 — a rate which, without serious interventions, is only going to increase exponentially as a relativity nascent tech field becomes increasingly mainstream and widely used. The firm’s plan to run on 100% green energy by 2030 is just one example of steps being taken, as is the new approach to carbon budgeting.

Atrium inside Google Borregas by MGA | Michael Green Architecture, Sunnyvale, California | Jury and Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Workspace; Jury Winner, Architecture + Wood, 12th Annual A+Awards

Yet, this year, for the first time since 2007, Google is no longer carbon neutral. Given the rapid rise in its energy use, it’s alarming to think the company could have claimed such status until this year, emphasizing how skewed current net zero measurements can be. The decision at board level to stop using offsets and instead deal with actual emissions, with Google Borregas contributing to this reduction, definitely isn’t the norm. But it is also a shrewd move.

One of the reasons the BSI and its affiliates are working on a net zero standardization is because of the complexity of gauging corporate impact. Without a standard we will never accurately set targets. And if that standard is fit for purpose, once it has been adopted there will be few options left for companies other than direct reduction.

Though MGA has long been a leader in addressing architecture’s green shortcomings, by taking a holistic approach to sustainability by addressing embodied and operational carbon, energy reduction and renewables, Google Borregas provides a repeatable template for flexibility and long life that, just like the tech giant whose headquarters it houses, also sets new standards for their peers in the architecture industry.

The jury and the public have had their say — feast your eyes on the winners of Architizer's 12th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.