YouTube Campus Expansion
San Bruno, Calif.
Award of Merit
Submitted by: McCarthy Building Cos.
Owner: YouTube, a Google Company
Lead Design Firm: EHDD
General Contractor: McCarthy Building Cos.
Civil Engineer: BKF
Structural Engineer: Holmes
Mechanical/Plumbing Engineer: Southland Industries Inc.
Electrical: Redwood Electric Group; Silverman & Light; Point Energy Innovations
This LEED Platinum three-building campus is designed to have a climate positive impact while fostering a workplace environment for creative technology workers.
At the owner’s request, user experience was the No. 1 design priority, resulting in a space that is aesthetically pleasing, biophilic and sustainable. Daylighting is prioritized throughout all areas of the buildings, which also include automatic, perforated, exterior louvers that adjust to block direct sunlight during periods of intense exposure, mitigating glare and reducing solar heat gain. All three buildings feature a mass timber structure, while a 5.3-MWH battery microgrid and 1.4 MW of solar panels allow the facility to operate off the grid for up to five hours a day. Additionally, an onsite 391,000-gallon rainwater cistern will divert up to 1.3 million gallons of water per year.
Completed in June 2023, the all-electric campus utilizes sustainably sourced mass timber and other low-carbon materials, which combined are estimated to have reduced the buildings’ embodied carbon emissions by nearly 22,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.