Google Brussels is located in a modern building of the last decade, designed by Jaspers-Eyers Architects, overlooking the green heart of the neighborhood: Leopold Park. The Belgian interior design studio PUUR oversaw the renovation with multi-level spaces in which workplaces, and the various meeting rooms, café, lounge, kitchen, restaurant and gym, could coexist harmoniously.

The designers, after cleaning the existing office from all the superstructures accumulated over the years to reveal the essence of the building, tried to integrate into the design the traditional, almost everyday materials found in old Belgian houses: wood, brick, Venetian-style terrazzo and corrugated steel. Moreover, the spaces are immersed in generous vegetation that gives the feel of a house in the woods.

A terrazzo floor, for example, marks the main circulation on the different floors, while corrugated metal slabs were used as dividers or load-bearing structures. The bricks, instead, are the protagonists of the wall behind the reception desk where, thanks to a three-dimensional game of depth, they draw the name of the client company. “The wall behind the reception desk on the third floor clearly shows what Google stands for,” says Jan Geysen from the PUUR studio. “We took some red bricks, a Belgian everyday material, and based on digital data we glued them together with a robot to create a Google logo. The result is amazing and symbolizes the drive for innovation and continuous improvement that is so clearly in Google’s DNA.”