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December 27, 2004
Top Ten Favorite Spots on the Microsoft Campus
It's the time of year when people make lists, so in that spirit, I present my top ten favorite spots on the Microsoft campus. I am limiting myself to the "main" campus (the buildings east of the 520 highway), since that is what I am most familiar with. Also, all the locations are accessible without a cardkey (although I am not sure of Microsoft's precise policy on people without badges wandering around campus).These are in no particular order; more precisely, they are in the order I took the pictures, so the order denotes nothing about relative ranking. Click on each thumbnail to bring up the larger picture.
I like this stairway because it makes you realize that this nondescript parking lot, which looks like any other paved lot in the world, is actually the second floor of an underground lot. Also it looks like a subway entrance.
This is a view of the entrance to the Building 16/17/18 garage complex. There are some parts where the garage is two stories high (straight ahead in the picture, for example), which I think looks cool, and I also like the way the landscaping around Building 16 (on the right), particularly the trees, turns out to be on top of nothing but air.
This is a long fence (purely symbolic/decorative) on the edge of the main fields on campus. Note how the fence, trees, and path form a geometric haiku. This view is down the street that is called Microsoft Way (but should really be something like 157th Ave NE); if you turn right up ahead, on NE 36th St, you have a similar view there.
The "old" part of main campus (buildings 1-6 and 8-10) were connected by these covered walkways. This is the walkway between 6 and 10; it has a gap in it, rumored to be so that fire trucks could reach the inner courtyard if necessary. Whatever the reason, the result is one of the few places on campus that looks like it was sponsored by the Dia Foundation. The fountain just beyond it, which is right behind Building 9, was a happening place to hang out in the "good old days". Most of the walkways are shorter, but the one connecting Buildings 2, 8, and 9 takes a nice little meander through some trees.
This view, of the front door of Building 5, reminds me of the drawing of the Elvenking's Gate in The Hobbit. But more importantly, it shows an integration with the natural environment that is missing in Microsoft's newer buildings. Buildings 1-6 have only one floor of parking below them, so the parking level was built on the ground and the buildings constructed above; this contrasts with later buildings which had multi-level underground parking below them, which required digging a big giant hole and then adding landscaping back once the buildings were done (e.g. Building 16/17/18, see above). For Building 5, they built this bridge to the entrance, which if you look from the side turns out to be no higher than about three feet off the ground most of the way; in a modern Microsoft building the depression that it crosses never would have survived.
This bridge is tucked away in a corner of campus by Building 5 (a complete backwater until the recent construction of the massive Building 36, just on the other side of the bridge). It crosses a small ravine; the bridge to the Building 5 entrance (see previous item) is actually over the tail end of the same ravine. I like it because it's a bridge, but also because it again demonstrates a harmonizing with the extant topography that is absent in newer buildings (it helps, of course, that the buildings are almost 20 years old, so nature has recovered from any construction-related disruption). I think this is the photo that would most likely stump Microsoft people if you showed it to them and asked where on campus it was.
Another walkway, this one crossing from Building 1 to Building 2. I spent a lot of time on this walkway when the NT networking team was split between the two buildings. I like the way this walkway jumps from being one floor above the path to two floors above the parking garage. Not sure what the twisty maze of pipes is for (they were added at some point after initial construction), but they march around this general area. There's also a nice stand of red flowering currant bushes on the right side (unfortunately not flowering this time of year).
How can you not include the famous Lake Bill, nestled between Buildings 1, 2, 3, and 4. For fours years my office in Building 2 looked out at the lake and its famous fowl (if you continue under the walkway in the previous item, you arrive at the point this picture was taken from). This is the lake that Steve Ballmer swam across (for charity) and I almost had to swim across (if the NT networking team had not delivered something by some deadline, which we did). Dead ahead is a nice little patio off the Building 4 cafeteria.
Microsoft deserves credit for making its building slightly more architecturally interesting then they needed to be -- but only slightly. Mostly they are variations on stone and brick. Building 34 (and its virtual twin, Building 35) does the best job of actually being interesting to look at. Note the ubiquitous campus shuttle parked in front.
This is the path you would take if you wanted to get from, say, Building 2 to the Building 16/17 cafeteria. It's just a path, but it has an unhurried look to it, and a nice stand of trees to the right. I suppose if you were looking for the physical manifestation of the "Chinese Wall" that may or may not have existed between Systems and Applications, it would be this path; in this view, Systems would be behind you and Apps ahead.
Posted by AdamBa at December 27, 2004 09:11 PM
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Comments
hmm, that looks like 35 though and not 34.
Posted by: J.P. at December 29, 2004 07:27 AM
