Facebook has partnered with OMA New York in imagining the Willow Campus, a Mixed-Use master plan in Menlo Park, California.
Facebook has just made public, which together with the headquarters of OMA in New York will present to the local authorities this month, the project of Willow Campus, a new neighborhood housing and endowments next to its headquarters in Menlo Park, California (USA). Facebook is the first to give another more positive view, of its urban grow, and the giant has taken as a reference the initial project designed by Frank Gehry, to solve much of the problems of its grow that the new headquarters of Internet giants has provoked in the region, such as homelessness, and a great chaos in public and private mobility.
 
“It’s exciting to collaborate with Facebook, whose innovation in networking and social media extends to urban ambitions for connectivity in the Bay Area. The Willow Campus masterplan creates a sense of place with diverse programming that responds to the needs of the Menlo Park community. The site has the potential to impact the future of regional transportation, housing, and environment,” said Shohei Shigematsu, OMA.

Facebook moved to Menlo Park in 2011, and their presence has expanded further since then, with a new building the MPK20 and now planning the reconstruction of the old Science and Technology Park of Menlo who claim to call the Campus Willow.

Facebook aims to create an integrated mixed-use village on the Willow Campus that will generate services, housing and new mobility, as well as office space. Part of that vision is to create a center that provides community services in a 11,612.88 square metre area of new commercial space.

The first official step will be the presentation of the project to the Menlo Park authorities in July 2017, a local discussion process which is expected to last approximately two years. Then the construction will come in phases, "we envision construction will follow in phases, with the first to include the grocery, retail, housing and office completed in early 2021, and subsequent phases will take two years each to complete," said Facebook in a statement.

Housing will also play an important role with the construction of 1,500 housing units on the campus, 15% of which will be offered at lower lower market rates. In addition, Facebook aims to mitigate traffic impacts from growth and solve the problems of congestion and traffic jams. "Willow Campus will be an opportunity to catalyze regional transit investment by providing planned density sufficient to support new east-west connections and a future transit center. We're investing tens of millions of dollars to improve US101," adds Facebook.

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Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is a leading international partnership practicing architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis. OMA's buildings and masterplans around the world insist on intelligent forms while inventing new possibilities for content and everyday use. OMA is led by ten partners – Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, David Gianotten, Chris van Duijn, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Jason Long and Michael Kokora – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Beijing, Hong Kong, Doha and Dubai.

Responsible for OMA’s operations in America, OMA New York was established in 2001 and has since overseen the successful completion of several buildings across the country including Milstein Hall at Cornell University (2011); the Wyly Theater in Dallas (2009); the Seattle Central Library (2004); the IIT Campus Center in Chicago (2003); and Prada’s Epicenter in New York (2001). The office is currently overseeing the construction of three cultural projects, including the Musée National des Beaux-arts du Québec and the Faena Arts District in Miami Beach – both scheduled for completion in 2016 – as well as a studio expansion for artist Cai Guo Qiang in New York. The New York office has most recently been commissioned to design a number of residential towers in San Francisco, New York, and Miami, as well as two projects in Los Angeles; the Plaza at Santa Monica, a mixed use complex in Los Angeles, and the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

OMA New York’s ongoing engagements with urban conditions around the world include a new civic center in Bogota, Colombia; a post-Hurricane Sandy, urban water strategy for New Jersey; the 11th Street Bridge Park and RFK Stadium-Armory Campus Masterplan in Washington, DC; and a food hub in West Louisville, Kentucky.

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Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.

OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).

AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.

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Published on: July 8, 2017
Cite: "Facebook chooses OMA New York to design a new neighborhood in California" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/facebook-chooses-oma-new-york-design-a-new-neighborhood-california> ISSN 1139-6415
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