Global Technology Campus is a 72-acre landscape transformation of a 30+ year-old low-density Redmond, Washington, USA campus. Recognizing the value of landscape, architecture, and vibrancy in attracting and retaining world-class talent, the client engaged a diverse mix of architects to design its
buildings. However, a single landscape team was selected to unify the campus and organize the 18 distinct buildings around a common vision. The shared landscape framework is the “Forest Thread”, and four “villages” divide the campus into zones mimicing iconic Pacific Northwest regional landscapes. Each village engages differently with forest, meadow, and water to balance ecological performance, daily use, and visitor experience.
Embedded outdoor breakout spaces extend the building program, supporting events, lectures, everyday work, and moments of quiet retreat within the landscape. Terraces integrated into each building ensure occupants are never more than two staircases away from open space, extending the landscape vertically, and reinforcing daily connection to fresh air, collaboration, and outdoor gathering.
The road-free campus prioritizes transit and active transportation with commuter lounges, shuttles, and new rail connections. Four distinct portals bring landscape and light to the lowest levels of the garage, guiding those who drive to ascend into the landscape, a deliberate choice to route people through the campus on their path into buildings. A network of barrier-free paths, promenades, gathering areas, and outdoor workspaces support a universally accessible campus design.
The campus landscape evolves from open and informal to dense, active and urban, as it moves from east to west in response to adjacent conditions. Water features, terraces, and crafted wood elements articulate progression from raw to refined, moving from peeled logs to heavy timbers to finely detailed seating and platforms.
The eastern edge of campus is defined by direct engagement with a mature woodland. The architecture appears surgically inserted among existing conifers more than 80 feet tall, many planted in the late 1970s. A pond from the early campus was reimagined to support higher ecological function and more meaningful interaction, reinforcing the Forest Thread as an extension of a mature forested watershed.
The western edge of the campus expresses the Forest Thread as it evolves from naturalistic to more urban conditions. This area is shaped by meadows, open greens, and water, and is organized as an all-pedestrian environment where landscape defines movement and experience. Much of this area is built over a below-grade structure that consolidates parking, district utilities and service access, freeing the campus above from car and truck movement and infrastructure.
The client deliberately invested in campus landscape and elevated design, recognizing it as creating business value through employee attraction, retention, and productivity. Simultaneously, it strengthens community as a campus that is equally welcoming to global business leaders and neighbors alike. The landscape models the company’s ambitious sustainability initiatives and fosters daily interaction with nature, enhancing employee and community wellbeing.
Deeply rooted in the Pacific Northwest, the landscape reflects the company’s heritage while setting a new global precedent—establishing a new model for campus design that supports growth, connection, and positive impact worldwide.
Global Technology Company
Location: Redmond, Washington, USA;
Landscape Architect: Berger Partnership
Images: BuiltWork Photography
Text: Berger Partnership
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