StructureHub

Techcrunch:  Behold!  The New Facebook Headquarters.

Although the dot-com bust ended nearly a decade ago, the architectural momentum behind those flimsy companies has kept on rumbling along.   The latest example?  Facebook’s new digs in a former HP office building in Palo Alto, California.  Judging by the photos on Techcrunch, the building was not chosen for its stunning design or renovated a la Googleplex, despite having a decidedly similar feel to other dot-com work places.

While the interior has that industrial aesthetic look, it tends toward the ad-hoc, “just moved in” side of things - not the result of an architect’s deep thinking.  The need for space was apparently the primary motive for the move; hopefully a re-design will come later.

But hey, Facebook’s new stripped-down look may actually be evidence of something.  Did you see the movie “August?”  As lamentably titled and mis-cast as it was, it perfectly portrayed the stereotypical circa-2000 start-up.

Employees (usually good-looking and in J.Crew) basked in utterly trendy (and if ugly, at least expensive) offices and spent much time at their massive Apple computers feigning productivity.  Break rooms were more like living rooms and if your building wasn’t in a formerly “gritty, but in a hip and up-and-coming kind of way” neighborhood of a suitably large city, you were on the un side of un-cool.

In the movie, everyone, save a valiant few, seemed to rest on the laurels of Landshark’s (the start-up’s name) recent IPO.  They settled back and ignored the troubling lack of anything approaching cash-flow on the corporate horizon.  Predictably, “August” ends in defeat for the start-up’s un-august founder.

Mark Zuckerburg (or the CFO?) must of seen the movie, because the simplicity of the new campus suggests a preoccupation with productivity before reward.  Perhaps the new digs are evidence that the start-up “passion” at Facebook has survived its many rounds of funding.  Well, maybe that’s hoping too much.