09-28-2007, 12:07 PM
When I worked in Chicago for a 'large' telecom company, the new corporate headquarters was being designed. The secretary near me, her husband was in charge of the construction/design. She showed us the blue prints. In the main area, it was like 3 or 4 stories open air atrium-like. There were two fountains. From 'the air' (blueprint vantage) they looked like a swastika and the mirror image of a swastika. I asked her if the architect was German (before pointing out the fountains) and she said "Yeah, why?".
I laughed then pointed them out to her. She was astonished, had not noticed it.
I had left the company by the time the building opened up, but once I visited it, I noticed the fountains were turned off. I asked. They said the tall atrium and open-air offices overlooking the atrium, were too noisy from the fountains and they were turned off after the first week.
You can kinda get an idea of this from the Google overlords' spy pics.
http://tinyurl.com/23curn
The co-worked I mentioned in a previous post about moving to Shanghai is a person I worked with at that company. We used to race our cars at this location BEFORE they bulldozed it and built the HQs there. It was like NOTHING... just an old back road. They bulldozed the whole place and imported (IMPORTED..like we don't have any HERE) trees and made those three pond/lakes. They also imported a ton of bamboo trees for INSIDE the place. I see from the google maps that they never expanded as planned. There was going to be a retail/hotel on the SE quadrant area. Looks like the helipad made it.
I laughed then pointed them out to her. She was astonished, had not noticed it.
I had left the company by the time the building opened up, but once I visited it, I noticed the fountains were turned off. I asked. They said the tall atrium and open-air offices overlooking the atrium, were too noisy from the fountains and they were turned off after the first week.
You can kinda get an idea of this from the Google overlords' spy pics.
http://tinyurl.com/23curn
The co-worked I mentioned in a previous post about moving to Shanghai is a person I worked with at that company. We used to race our cars at this location BEFORE they bulldozed it and built the HQs there. It was like NOTHING... just an old back road. They bulldozed the whole place and imported (IMPORTED..like we don't have any HERE) trees and made those three pond/lakes. They also imported a ton of bamboo trees for INSIDE the place. I see from the google maps that they never expanded as planned. There was going to be a retail/hotel on the SE quadrant area. Looks like the helipad made it.