Google Wins Approval for UK Headquarters

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Internet giant Google has received approval from the Camden Borough Council for the company's new U.K. headquarters in King's Cross. 

The London site will be one the of the company's largest headquarters outside of its Googleplex in California. The site is expected to draw other technology companies while bumping up rents in King's Cross Central, a 67-acre redevelopment site. 

"Building our new headquarters in King's Cross is good for Google and good for London," Google UK's managing director, Dan Cobley, said in June. "We're committed to the UK and to playing a role in the regeneration of this historic area."

The building's 330 meter length is taller than the 310-meter-tall Shard, one of the tallest buildings in Western Europe, and sits on a 2.4 acre site that cost the company £650 million, the Telegraph reports.

The company has shifted from leasing overseas offices to purchasing locations in Paris, Dublin and now London. The King's Cross site will be used mostly as offices but will also offer 50,000 square feet of retail space, the Telegraph reports. 

Google's offices are known for benefits including gourmet food, bowling alleys, high-tech gyms and on-site medical staff. The new 920,000-square-foot Google site is no exception. It is expected to include a 20,000-square-foot area for bike parking, a climbing wall between floors, a swimming pool, running track, cinema and a wildflower roof garden.

The building is designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris. Google's new workplace is organized around a "looped three-dimensional promenade that wraps its way along, through and up the building's six to ten office floors, connecting cycling ramps, cores, workstations, major shared amenities, terraces and a large roof garden," according to the firm's website. 

"This building is underpinned by cutting edge design intelligence and technologies to provide a sophisticated twenty-first century working environment for Google's staff," Simon Allford, director of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, told the Telegraph. "The architectural approach, which has taken inspiration from King's Cross and St. Pancras International railway stations, complements the local area's strong industrial heritage and will be a building London can be proud of."

Construction is expected to begin early next year with completion in 2017 for the company's several thousand London employees.