Heatherwick Studio and BIG’s Google HQ to open this summer, 10 years after it was first set to complete

Google’s £1bn headquarters in King’s Cross is finally set to open this summer, 10 years after it was originally set to complete.

The tech giant will start moving staff into the 330m-long groundscraper within the next few months including members of its DeepMind team, a UK-based subsidiary which provides research on AI.

The Heatherwick Studio and BIG -designed office has also been named Platform 37, in reference to both the neighbouring King’s Cross station and a historic moment in the development of AI called Move 37.

In a blog published yesterday, DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis also revealed that the 10-storey building will contain a ground floor public space called the AI Exchange.

The opening comes almost 13 years after Google first unveiled an initial set of proposals for the prime north London site designed by AHMM.

This scheme was set to be built by BAM but was scrapped just two months after gaining planning approval in November 2013, with a planned redesign pushing back projected completion from 2016 to 2017.

It later emerged Google was undertaking a global review of its major developments which would see the scheme put on ice for the next three years before a redrawn set of proposals designed by Heatherwick Studio and BIG, which had replaced AHMM as lead architects, was revealed in 2016.

Lendlease was confirmed as the main contractor on the new scheme, then named KGX1, the following year with work on site by Laing O-Rourke-owned piling contractor Expanded finally beginning in 2018.

But two years later, with 200 workers on site, a covid outbreak at the beginning of the pandemic made it one of the first major construction sites in the capital to close with work grinding to a halt for three months before reopening in June 2020.

Then, in 2024, it was caught up in the collapse of ISG, which had been appointed the previous year to fit out the 300,000sq ft office with the firm replaced by Structure Tone.

Once opened, the office is set to be a key addition to the cluster of research spaces in King’s Cross known as the Knowledge Quarter. Its interiors feature expansive triple-height spaces, a rooftop garden and a large two-storey public space at street level beneath the building which will contain a series of bespoke timber retail units.

Move 37, the term which has inspired the building’s new name, refers to a pivotal moment in a match of the game Go between world champion Lee Sae Do and Google’s DeepMind system in 2016, which is considered by Google to have heralded the modern era of AI.