Thoughts on the Google Building

This blog post is the result of some of my thoughts regarding Google as a built form whilst researching over the weekend.

If Google was going to be a building, it would be something that is in constant flux and always changing as people interact with it. As a user starts a new search, forms (architectural) would shift to reveal new pieces of information that would be constantly refining as the user changes key words in their search to narrow down what they are looking for. The building would constantly be changing and always in flux.

Google as a building would also make information flows tangible, providing a spatial experience. It would be able to represent current happenings in the news by creating atmospheres, connecting people with events across the world, taking influence from the work by Hiroshi Ishi and his early work. On another level, the Google building could create atmospheres like that of one of my previous posts, Projection Atmospheres where the room is painted white and as you enter the room, it quickly adapts to you. Your proximity to different content on the walls then makes the room shift again so that it matches your current state. As your actions change, so does that of the building.

Alternatively, the Google building would be about indexing, making information tangible through visualisations. After a big event such as the royal wedding, different peoples search results around the globe could be visualised showing who is searching what and where. Also trends could be visualised showing what or who is the most popular both at a regional basis and a word basis. In addition, as current news stories break out, the implementation of this could be visualised by showing the sudden break out of google searches that are being made.

Ultimately, both of the above lead to the creation of tangible user interfaces.

What do I need to do to find out more?

1. Research more on the inner workings of Google. If I am going to visualise it in an architectural form then I need to understand how it works.

2. What data am I going to visualise

The Google culture has left us all now as editors. Content is left for us to decide if it is good or bad. This can be dangerous if people don’t know how to be selective. Google is an un-edited place. What does this mean to the transfer of knowledge and information?