Google Offices, New York City

Google is an American multinational tech firm, which specialises in online services and products and employs around 7,000 people in New York City.

New York City’s former port authority building is reminiscent of a stranded red cruise ship. It is located in the artistic neighbourhood of Chelsea, which has become one of NYC’s most popular places to live.

The building is so big that it takes up an entire block between 15th and 16th Street on 8th Avenue. You need around 20 minutes to walk once around the building. The size is all the more impressive when you consider that it is rare to find a building that is so large on horizontal scale in a city as built-up and full of very high buildings as New York. The building itself offers almost 2.9 million square metres of office space.

Google bought the building in 2011. When Google buys offices, it not only refurbishes them but redesigns them from scratch. Every one of Google’s 24 North American offices has its own unique look designed to fit in with the city where it is located.

The New York office features a corridor tiled top to bottom with subway tiles, complete with a fire hose and hallmark graffiti on the walls. It also has a series of themed conference rooms, including a subway room with a full-wall map of the New York subway system and a Broadway room with elegant gold chairs upholstered in red velvet.

The Chelsea offices are carefully designed and set up to provide employees with as many opportunities for interaction as possible. In essence, the office is designed to work in a similar way as New York City in that it enables lots of different groups of people to meet one another by chance as often as possible.

And yet, with all the hustle and bustle of a busy office, Google understands the need for privacy and peace. The office in Chelsea has a number of nooks, recesses and quiet corners where employees can think in peace, meditate or simply work.

GU solution: Turn-Only windows with special concealed hinges up to 300 kg

Google wanted to improve the aesthetic value and efficiency of its corporate headquarters in New York. That is why it needed windows that are both robust and offer very good heat insulation (air-tight, water-tight, wind-proof and with a high load absorption). The project required 3,500 windows to be replaced.