“Google for President”: Power and the Mediated Construction of an Unbuilt Big Tech Headquarters Project

Abstract

Abstract Big Tech companies are powerful global actors that wield unprecedented influence, including in the realms of governance. How these companies position themselves through media is important to their power. Architecture plays a fundamental role in representations of Big Tech as influential agents, translating symbolic capital between fields, from architecture to Big Tech, and vice versa. Our qualitative content analysis of media of Google’s proposed project for a headquarters in Mountain View, California, shows how the mediatisation of renowned architects and their work helps translate the vast digital and financial power of Google into a palatable physical presence in a relatively small town with local concerns. The mediated architectural project provides a way for Google to step into governance roles while de-emphasising its global power. In this case, media representations of architecture are mobilised to construct a fictional future that a corporate actor presents as desirable locally and aspirational globally.