REVEALED: Google's GINORMOUS £650m London Choc Factory What would you do if you had a golden ticket that helped you avoid having to cough a big wodge of tax cash? Well, if you were Google, you'd build a hulking great glass monstrosity as wide as The Shard is tall, smack bang in the middle of London. The advertising giant has filed plans for a new £650m, 330m-long UK Chocolate …
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Although it may appear to be in Camden, for tax purposes the building is actually in another dimension.
Also due to Google's advanced inter-dimensional engineering, the interior of the building is actually smaller than the outside - so they will only be liable for tax on the 1sq ft inside space
When did you last go to King's Cross?
The UK's only International Railway station and the East Coast mainline terminus are hardly just "a couple of stations" not to mention the proximity to Euston, Paddington and the excellent underground links to the rest of the capital. It seems like a pretty sensible place to put a company and many people are.
Not that I don't want Google to FRO, but that's another matter.
I second that. After their recent architectural 'upgrades' they're the best two buildings associated with travel in the country (thank you English Heritage). I recommend The Parcel Yard pub upstairs in King's Cross.
And it'll be TWO international stations soon - after the Scottish referendum that is.
I can't see any St Pancras influence in there.
While they do seem to have captured the "concrete shithole" appearance of King's Cross, they seem to have omitted the rather fine brick and iron construction behind its facade.
Also, an artist's impression is supposed to be of how the thing would look, not how it would look if you were to take a picture of it with a wide-angle lens. Unless of course it's supposed to look as if it were designed by Picasso while he was off his face on Absinthe.
Depends very much on what part of London you're building on, how close to the river, underlying soil types etc.
Rumour has it that one largish government building that went up in the 60's in the Westminster area had it's planned height drastically reduced at one end part way through construction, as the end nearer the river was showing signs of sinking. So this building ended up one end around 11-12 stories high, the other end 6.
To build higher in London, with the clay subsoil especially, you have to dig much deeper foundations than for a lower building. This has impacts beyond the costs of digging the hole and building the foundations as anywhere in London that a new building goes up there has to be an archaeological survey done of the area - and the deeper you go the more chance that you'll come across something interesting from the past. This leads to everything being held up for months or even years while the archaeologists do their thing.
That's the way stuff like this works. I guarantee they've got an 'alternative' design already drawn up. If the tax laws are changed they'll be forced to use the secondary design instead. It'll be a super high quality presentation of a shack built of old shipping pallets and surrounded by security staff that will illustrate the dystopian hell they'll be forced to live in if their favorable incentives are taken away.
Not only will be be rented by they will claim the cost of the rent as a loss on their taxes along with the cost of paying for all their staff as well. Google are consistent, they will find a way of paying no taxes at all anywhere but they continue to show huge profits to their shareholders but never make a decent profit anywhere and never seem to pay taxes on what profits they do declare.
Unless you are renting the building from yourself and billing the UK operations $1000/day for each of the staff who are actually employed by Google-Venus, their new off-planet tax haven.
It was one of the few tax scams for small businesses. You were allowed to invest in real estate tax free as part of your pension. So you built a factory and rented it to your own company for well above market rates. The company paid less tax because it made less profit and all the extra money went into your real estate company which you got tax back on because it was a pension fund investment
Yet another boring rectangular block! Overbearing, aesthetically uninspiring. In fact lazy.
Perhaps an architect would explain why today's new buildings ALWAYS have to have 90 degree angles? Is it cost? Is it lack of imagination? Is it hard to draw anything other than rectangles in AutoCAD and ArchiCAD software? Are you scared your peers will laugh if you do something interesting?
Look at the buildings we civilians love the most. It is very very simple: new and old, they all have at least SOME interesting angles and curves.
Pfft.
"We’re committed to the UK and to playing a role in the regeneration of this historic area."
According to a documentation I watched about the redevelopment of the Kings Cross station, the residents of the area are firmly opposed to "regeneration", because the goals of "regeneration" have nothing to do with the wants or needs of the residents themselves, and everything to do with corporate greed.
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