The virtual architecture of Silicon Valley

Journal of Architectural Education

Volumn 54, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 88-94

  Wright, Gwendolyn ^a  

^a Columbia University ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 42949179228     PISSN: 10464883     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/104648800564798     Document Type: Review

References (44)

1. The term originated with Alvin Weinberg's "Impact of Large-Scale Science on the United States" (Science 134 (1961): 161-64), which expressed some trepidation about the loss of social values in the "Olympic," high-stakes world of postwar science.
2. For an excellent overview of this geographical and intellectual domain, see Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly, eds. , Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).
3. Among the best overviews are AnnaLee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996)
4. AnnaLee Saxenian, "The Genesis of Silicon Valley," Built Environment 9 (1983): 7-17
5. reprinted in Peter Hall and Ann Markusen, eds. , Silicon Landscapes (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1985), pp. 20-34
6. Manuel Castells and Peter Hall, Technopoles of the World (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 12-28
7. Everett M. Rogers and Judith K. Larsen, Silicon Valley Fever: Growth of High-Technology Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1984)
8. Michael Malone, The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985)
9. and Robert Kargon, Stuart W. Leslie, and Erica Schoenberger, "Far Beyond Big Science: Science Regions and the Organization of Research and Development" in Galison and Hevly, eds. , Big Science, pp. 335-54.
10. Thoughtful if brief architectural discussions include Langdon Winner, "Silicon Valley Mystery House" in Michael Sorkin, ed. , Variations on a Theme Park (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), pp. 31-60
11. Mitchell Schwarzer, "Beyond the Valley of Silicon Architecture," Harvard Design Magazine (winter/spring 1999): 15-21
12. and Cathy Lang Ho, "Silicon Valley,"Metropolis (Oct. 1995): 88, 70-72.
13. Terman in fact grew up on the Stanford campus, the son of a psychology professor. After studying there he went to MIT for his Ph. D. Offered an appointment at MIT in 1925, he decided to return to northern California for his health.
14. David Packard, The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company (New York: Harper Business, 1995), p. 40.
15. Michael I. Luger and Harvey A. Goldstein, Technology in the Garden: Research Parks in Regional Economic Development(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 126
16. Saxenien, "Genesis of Silicon Valley," p. 24. In addition, the university created the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in 1946 for the purpose of "pursuing science for practical purposes [which] might not be fully compatible internally with the traditional roles of the university. " The SRI specifically encouraged collaboration with the military and sought to promote local industries.
17. Luger and Goldstein, Technology in the Garden, esp. pp. 122-54.
18. Frederick Terman, "Dean's Report, School of Engineering, 1946-1947, cited in Saxenian, Regional Advantage, p. 22.
19. Kump had been a leading designer of Bay Area educational buildings since the early 1940s, balancing standardized modules with informal site planning. He also designed the Los Altos Civic Center of 1960 in the same vein, setting four separate buildings with seemingly artless grace in an old apricot orchard.
20. The precedent of a First Bay Area Style referred to the much admired turn-of-the-century work by architects such as Bernard Maybeck, Willis Polk, John Galen Howard, and Julia Morgan. The new group, equally informal, included Wurster, Kump, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Gardner Dailey, Joseph Esherick, and the landscape architect Thomas Church. See Lewis Mumford, "The Skyline: The Status Quo," The New Yorker (Oct. 11, 1947): 106, 109
21. (reprinted in Museum of Modern Art Bulletin [Spring 1948]: p. 4
22. and in Joan Ockman, ed. , Architecture Culture 1943-1968 [New York: Rizzolli, 1993], p. 109)
23. Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region (exhibition catalogue, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1949)
24. esp. Lewis Mumford, "The Architecture of the Bay Region"; Sally B. Woodbridge, ed. , Bay Area Houses (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1988)
25. and Greg Hise, "Building Design as Social Art: The Public Architecture of William Wurster, 1935-1950," in Marc Treib, ed. , An Everyday Modernism: The Houses of William Wurster (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1995), pp. 138-64.
26. Elizabeth Mock, editor, Built in U. S. A. : American Architecture since 1932. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1945).
27. Lockheed's effort to set up an R & D lab in southern California the year before had failed.
28. This early grouping was demolished to make way for the construction of a "more authoritative" building complex in 1972. McCue Boone Tomsick designed the new master plan with equally modern landscaping by Sasaki-Walker. (These comments are from David Gebhard, Eric Sandweiss, and Robert Winter, Architecture in San Francisco and Northern California [Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1986], p. 172. )
29. Journalist Don Hoefler coined the term in a three-part series, "Silicon Valley - U. S. A. " for Electronic News in June 1971, reprinted in U. S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Technology and Economic Growth, 1976, pp. 172-73.
30. In addition, the new CEOs built lavish, custom-built mansions in the hills, no longer willing to live in simple tract houses, and the San Jose airport provided space for private Lear Jets.
31. Saxenian, Regional Advantage, p. 30.
32. On the IBM campus, see Reyner Banham, "The Architecture of Silicon Valley," New West 5 (Sept. 22, 1980): 47-51
33. Allan Temko, "IBM's New Palace of Technology" (1978)
34. (reprinted in No Way to Build a Ballpark and Other Irreverent Essays [San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993], pp. 96-98)
35. and Allan Temko, "IBM Santa Teresa Laboratory," Architectural Record 161 (Aug. 1977): 99-104.
36. Lee Butcher, Accidental Millionaire: The Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs at Apple Computer (New York: Paragon House, 1988), p. 89.
37. The industry norm hovers around 30 percent, though for engineers in new firms it is over 50 percent.
38. Packard, The HP Way
39. Deone Zell, Changing by Design: Organizational Innovation at Hewlett-Packard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).
40. In 1980 the San Jose Mercury-News exposed the fact that the semiconductor industry uses some of the most hazardous chemicals that exist, and that it has one of the highest incidences of occupationally related illness of any industry in California. Since then the paper has reported dangerous toxic waste dumps and leaks, which correlated with a marked rise in birth defects in the area at large.
41. Schwarzer, "Beyond the Valley," p. 18.
42. Michael Lewis, The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000).
43. Jones's proposals for General Instruments, outside Philadelphia, called for four buildings that differ only in the arrangement of their core elements, thereby responding to the commercial real estate market's concerns for "exit strategies. " See Wes Jones, Instrumental Form: Designs for Words, Buildings, Machines (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), pp. 321-36.
44. See Ho, "Silicon Valley. "