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January 03, 2005
Other Nice Spots on the Microsoft Campus
John Walkenbach linked to my "favorite spots" post and mentioned that he liked the courtyard between building 16 and 17 that contained the "Ship-It" tiles (Microsoft has a program where employees receive little gold stamps for each product they work on, when it ships. A tile was also added to the courtyard for each product; I'm not sure if they are still doing that).I agree; the courtyard is nice, and in fact I almost included it on my list. These are the other places I considered:
- Traffic circle in front of Building 4 (a reminder of when this was the "impressive" entrance to the executive building).
- Old loading dock by Building 1 (another echo of former glory, now moss-covered and repurposed into a plain old parking spot).
- Treed area south of Buildings 5 and 6 (the putative location of the mythical Building 7).
- Landscaping behind the Building 25 Cafe (I like it, and the 25 cafeteria remains the best one on campus IMHO; you normally need a cardkey to get here although I guess you could fight your way through the landscaping from the corner of 156th and 40th).
- Path from the external garage to the parking under Building 26 South (This is about ten feet long and saves you maybe 50 feet of walking, but I like the way it was created naturally by people cutting through the bushes).
- Concrete wall/terrace at the north end of Building 17 (not sure why I like this, perhaps it's something about how the strairs cut through it).
- Building 16/17 Ship-It courtyard, as mentioned above.
Plus two at RedWest -- the central area (hard to mess this one up, given the view) and the "garage under the house" that was built to relieve overcrowded parking.
I am at work today, because the kids had no school on Friday and school today so I swapped (officially today is a corporate holiday). It's a clear, cold day, and I finally confirmed that I can see Mount Baker from my office window.
Posted by AdamBa at January 3, 2005 01:32 PM
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Comments
I am a big fan of the path from the sidewalk on ne 31st / microsoft way to the building 26 cafe. Back when they had WIMs, it was almost necessary in order to get to the cafe.
Posted by: J.P. at January 3, 2005 06:11 PM
You mean the one that runs right next to the ramp down to the loading dock (but the path is going up). Yes, I like that also. The landscaping on the other side is also well done, they did a good job creating a fake forest to shield the back of the cafeteria (very much like the landscaping behind the 25 cafeteria, which is basically a twin of the 26 cafeteria).
- adam
Posted by: Adam Barr at January 4, 2005 11:10 AM
