Facebook Taps Frank Gehry for New Manhattan Digs
According to Serkan Piantino, head of Facebook's New York engineering team, the crew's move isn't going to be just any humdrum relocation: Frank Gehry, legendary designer of big wavy metallic buildings, will be converting two entire floors of office space for the social network.
Our new office is around 100,000 square feet and takes up two floors of an existing building. It's almost double the size of our current space and gives us room to grow even further. That means big, open spaces for people to work and collaborate, and lots of room for conference rooms and cozy spaces where people can meet or grab a white board to talk through ideas on a whim. We'll have plenty of video conferencing equipment to make meeting with our colleagues in other offices really quick and easy. We'll have room to build out a full service kitchen and serve great food throughout the day. And, of course, we'll still have all the other Facebook benefits like free laundry, gym memberships and lots of paid vacation.
We were delighted when [Gehry] agreed to help us build out our new space in New York. It will share many of the features of our headquarters, but will be distinctly Big Apple in design and speak to the unique experience of working in a place like Manhattan.
Piantino's description lines up with the earlier FB real estate rumor, so means Facebook is almost certainly moving into a space by NYU, where AOL currently resides. Those guys are gonna be so jealous.