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PREVIEW: Visions Of Facebook’s Future Campus

This Saturday some 150 architects got together with Menlo Park residents to brainstorm redesigning the neighborhood surrounding Facebook’s future home.

Facebook already has the design company Gensler working on internally improving the 11 interconnected buildings on the 57-acre campus formerly occupied by Sun Microsystems. The so-called design charette organized by the city of Menlo Park and hosted on the Facebook campus this Saturday focused on external improvements to the area.
Fast Company’s design blog described the current layout and location of the campus as an “isolated” and “inward-looking little tech colony,” summing up the before-and-after as:
A ring of 11 interconnected buildings creates an inward-looking little tech colony bordered by acres of parking on all sides. While there may not be an actual moat ringing the complex, marshland on two sides and four lanes of cross-if-you-dare Bayshore Expressway on the other provide the same defensive feel. Facebook says it wants to change the fortress vibe and embrace the community.
The architects and community members divided into four groups, each named after a color, and discussed designs like the ones we’ve included in this post, reproduced from the Fast Company blog. Which of the three images below do you like best?

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