How Google is creating its new offices

Concepts include ‘pods’ where furniture can be rearranged, ‘camps’ and outdoor work areas

Spaces dedicated to focused work within the “team pods” at Google’s R&D lab in Mountain View, California. PHOTO: NYTIMES
In 2018, Google's real estate group began to consider what it could do differently. PHOTO: NYTIMES
Camp Charleston is a fenced-in mix of grass and wooden deck flooring about the size of four tennis courts with Wi-Fi throughout. PHOTO: NYTIMES
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(NYTIMES) - Google is creating a post-pandemic workplace that will accommodate employees who have got used to working from home over the past year and don't want to be in the office all the time anymore.

The company will encourage - but not mandate - that employees be vaccinated when they start returning to the office, probably in September. And over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs in millions of square feet of space, or about 10 per cent of its global work spaces.

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