Inside Google’s new $1billion HQ with ‘dragon skin roof’ and sustainable panels

GOOGLE has just unveiled its newest headquarters – and it features a roof that resembles dragon scales.

The tech giant just opened its new California office on the Bay View campus at Mountain View, Santa Clara County. 

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Designed by London-based Heatherwick Studio and BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), the site occupies 102,000m² of space.

Construction wrapped up earlier this year – nearly ten years after the space was announced.

The site, which is powered by solar technology, features three Bay View buildings.

Two of the buildings serve as offices, while the other is a 1,000- seat auditorium.

However, it's the buildings' roofs that have been making headlines as they are fitted with silver photovoltaic panels that look like dragon scales. 

When combined with local wind power, the lightweight roofs generate 40 percent of the scheme’s energy demands.

The design is meant to align with Google’s ambitions of operating with completely 100 percent renewable energy by the end of the decade.

As of right now, the space is running on 90 percent renewable energy 24 hours a day, per

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The location has been described as the ‘first-ever purpose-built headquarters’, per

It is also one of a pair of sister developments in California – the other is dubbed Charleston East and is due to be completed next year.

When asked what inspired this design, Eliot Postma of Heatherwick Studio said that the group was trying to "design a building for an organization that is evolving so fast."

He added that flexibility and adaptability were a huge driving force behind the design as they didn't know what Google might do with the space.

"Google is so data-driven. Every single design move we made, though initially based on experience, also needed to be backed up in terms of data, the metrics, and on the grounds, it was also providing an environmental benefit to the building," Postma said.

He noted that the overall approach was driven by the sun, rain, and earth – but designers really focused on harnessing as much energy as they could from the sun.

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"There are issues with drought in California, so we made sure we were capturing and harnessing as much rainwater as possible and at the same time reducing the energy consumption of the building by using heat from the earth."

"It was these big-picture principles that we tried to bake into the building."