The emerging tech hub at King’s Cross in central London might be welcoming Facebook really soon, as the company is thought to be finalising its plans for a new British headquarters. The planned development is expected to feature 65,000 square metres of office space, tripling Facebook’s footprint in the capital.
A source from The Times speculated that the new campus would be used as ‘growth space’: “They simply do not have the people to put in there yet — it’s growth space. These guys are immune to Brexit and they need to be in London because that’s where the talent is. It’s about the availability of buildings that can be delivered to their timetable in a cool location.”
The offices would be located to the north of the Central Saint Martins art school and Facebook would become the latest tech firm on the King’s Cross development. Google is currently building a new headquarters on the site designed by Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick, following their planning application for the 93,000 square metre office for 7,000 employees that was submitted in 2017.
The architect is not known for the new Facebook London HQ, which is still at an early stage. Facebook moved into the Silicon Valley headquarters designed by Frank Gehry in 2015. The building claims to have ‘the largest open floor plan in the world’ and the 40,000 square metre office is topped with a huge rooftop park.
Over the past ten years, the developments at the King’s Cross site have been progressively growing, with the most recent work of Duggan Morris who completed an office block with a millennial pink exterior. Thomas Heatherwick is also working towards transforming a Victorian coal yard into a canal side shopping centre.
