(The mock-up of the new headquarters of Facebook, Menlo Park, 2016)
Facebook City, or Zee-Town (from Zuckerberg) is an important project from 2012, for the creation of a new ideal city/urbanization of about 80 hectares, by Mark Zuckerberg, founding CEO of the American company of social networking Facebook, in Menlo Park, San Francisco Bay, Silicon Valley, California, USA.
After founding his Facebook company in 2004, his foundation Initiative Chan Zuckerberg in 2009, and becoming the world’s 16th largest fortune in 2015 with $ 33.4 billion, Mark Zuckerberg announces in 2012 his project to create a new city, on the site of its company in Menlo Park in Silicon Valley, California, to house its 6,600 employees and their families, and up to 10,000 people, on about 80 hectares.
Much more than a campus project, this ambitious and very costly project of income in kind for its employees in housing and urban planning adapted, allows its initiator to strengthen its corporate culture and encourage its employees to focus on their employment, in the long term.
The project is entrusted to the famous architect Frank Gehry, and is inspired by numerous past projects of the nineteenth century of ideal new city, such as the phalanster of Charles Fourier, family of Guise, familister Godin, ideal city of Chaux de Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, the Creusot of the family Schneider, Suwon (or “Samsung City”) in South Korea, and many others.
Characteristics:
- Surface of about 80 hectares, with prospect of extension
- Housing and living capacity for 10,000 employees and their families
- Ecological project fused in a forest of trees and greenery
- Downtown, villas, apartments, collective dwellings, nursery, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, all shops, sports and leisure facilities
- Estimated budget: $ 200 billion
- Architect: Frank Gehry
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