The creation myth of Silicon Valley tech companies often involves a Eureka moment in a garage, the kind of space that can be quickly adapted to get the job done. Companies try to hold on to that anything-is-possible ethos as they grow, but somehow always end up in the same bland office parks as the companies their creativity is intended to disrupt. In its new building, Facebook (which, to be clear, was invented in a dorm room) extends that garage ethos to the scale of an aircraft hangar—make it several hangars.
Under majestic, 22-foot-high ceilings (more than twice the standard office height), shiny ducts run beneath raw-steel beams from which dangle a profusion of wiring tubes that attach like a mosquito’s proboscis to clusters of six or eight desks.