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Tag: Housing

  • Facebook Is Turning Its Campus into a Small Town

    Facebook, like most large companies, hopes that its employees will eat, sleep, and breathe the job. Now, it looks like the company is taking that mantra literally – and they’re also adding drink, work out, and play to the mix.

    The company has announced plans to add a 630,000 sq. ft. housing community to its already massive Menlo Park campus. The space will feature 394 individual units and is less than two miles away from its main campus. They’re calling it Anton Menlo.

    According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the complex will feature its own restaurant, sports bar, pet spa, pool, wellness center, personal training facility, and rooftop entertainment area.

    “The beauty of this thing is that it’s extremely close to our campus,” John Tenanes, Facebook’s director of real estate told the WSJ. “It’s a five-minute bike ride along a dedicated path that runs along the San Francisco bay…you don’t even have to put on the brakes.”

    15 of the units will be reserved for Facebook employees, but the rest are open to the public. Facebook will be subsidizing some units for low-income residents.

    Add the new living area to the new Frank Gehry-designed second campus that the company just broke ground on, and you’ve got yourself a Facebook mini-city.

    The second campus is a sprwaling 22-acre lot, on which a 433,555 sq. ft. building will be located. It was first announced back in August of 2012 and approved by the Menlo Park City Council in March.

    Image via Facebook

  • Dutch Architect Plans To Build The First 3D Printed House By 2014

    The 3D printed house has been a pipe dream for many years as engineers and architects think of ways to make 3D printers big enough to handle such a task. There have been some important breakthroughs over the years, but the day of the first 3D printed building may soon be upon us.

    3ders reports that Janjaap Ruijssenaars, a Dutch architect at Universe Architecture, has completed design work on a “one-piece building” that will be constructed by a 3D printer. He expects the technology to print the entire house will be available by 2014.

    So what exactly does a one-piece building mean? The Landscape House, as Ruijssenaars has dubbed it, is a house that takes on the continuing design of a Möbius strip. Here’s how he describes the project:

    One surface folded in an endless Möbius band. Floors transform into ceilings, inside into outside. Production with innovative 3D printing techniques. Architecture of continuity with an endless array of applicability.

    Of course, the building would be too large to print out in one go. Instead, the team will be printing out the building piece by piece and then attaching them together. The pieces will be about six-by-nine meters in size. The team also plans to reinforce the contours of the house with concrete so the building won’t fall under its own weight.

    So, which 3D printer will be Ruijssenaars being used for the project? He will be making use of D-Shape, a new 3D printing technology that uses sand and an inorganic binder to create unique shapes that would otherwise be impossible in traditional construction.