Google

Interactive, fun, and meaningful were the ideas that guided KBAA’s vision for Google’s campus in Sunnyvale, CA

In over twenty-five years of art advisory experience, we’ve worked with plenty of big companies, but it’s not every day that we get to work with a company that the whole world uses. This was certainly the case when we took on the task of commissioning and sourcing art for a company whose name has all but replaced the word ‘search’ in the English language.

For this job, our art advisors were given creative direction to stay in the Google colors and draw inspiration from the love and knowledge of technology that built the company. What resulted were a number of tech-inspired art pieces that are meant to inspire and engage employees and visitors alike.

A kinetic sculpture by artist Juan Fontanive was custom-designed to hang from the lobby’s ceiling, moving on a timer to alternate views from monochrome to multicolored. An art piece inspired by memory core units dominates a 16-foot-by-12-foot space inside one of the Corner buildings, taking up two floors with its copper tubing. A found object art piece made of old-school tech products was designed in a Cloud shape by local Bay Area artist Antlre. Even a trip in the Google Cloud building’s elevator is an experience with a magnet wall of silly faces with interchangeable custom-printed accessories for Googlers to swap out. In another area, a binary code-inspired interactive wall artwork by artist Justin Ware features 1’s and 0’s fabricated from USB cord for programmers to create their own decodable phrases.

The keystone of the Google Tech Corners’ art is a piece whose creation was directed by the wish for an art piece that would pay homage to the Silicon Valley history of the company. To accomplish this, our team commissioned a wall covering of sculptural acrylic pieces in Google colors overlaid on top to look like a map. Scattered across the map are QR codes so visitors and employees alike can scan to learn more about Google’s local history.

Techie culture-as-art with a dash of whimsy is what Google was looking for, and that’s what KBAA delivered.