Microsoft recently unveiled a project that will take an estimated five to seven years to complete. It is not a revolutionary new device or software. The plan centers on the renovation and expansion of their main campus in Redmond, Washington.
In the following years, Microsoft will work on modernizing their main campus to accommodate a larger workforce. They also aim to eliminate the one-person-per-cubicle aesthetic that used to be the norm of the last decade. The company will be remodeling towards a more open workplace design, like the ones employed by tech companies Google and Apple.
Microsoft's buildings in Redmond currently house approximately 47,000 employees. After the renovation, there will be room for 8,000 more.
The process will involve tearing down 12 old buildings, 10 of which are X-shaped structures that mark Microsoft's early days in the area. These will be replaced by 18 structures that are expected to be bigger than the ones built before them.
The renovation project is currently underway, and there are plans to construct several new four-story buildings. The centerpiece of these structures will be the two-acre open plaza that could fit around 2,000 people.
They also plan to retain some of the natural feel in an urban environment. In line with this, Microsoft recently unveiled three treehouses in the campus. These treehouses are actual huts built on top of trees and can be used for meetings and conferences.
This is a large-scale project for Microsoft, and as such, they had not yet publicly disclosed how much it would cost. They only said that the renovation would be a multibillion-dollar project.
The Microsoft campus redevelopment project will renovate 6.7 million square feet of land. The company will also work on a 2.5 million square feet of land dedicated to new construction. All in all, the project will add 1.3 million square feet to the campus' 10 million square feet of space.
