Gates charity relocates

SEATTLE – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is celebrating its new headquarters this week as it moves from five scattered nondescript office buildings around Seattle to an architectural showcase in the center of its hometown.

The move and the buildings are indicative of how far the family foundation has come in little more than a decade, from a small charity interested in bringing the Internet to public libraries to the world’s largest charitable foundation trying to end AIDS and polio and improve U.S. education.

“We just never thought we would grow this big and this fast,” said Martha Choe, chief administrative officer of the foundation.

As the new headquarters’ chief architect pointed out Thursday, most of the foundation’s old buildings didn’t even have a sign out front. Now, the staff of nearly 1,000 goes to work each day in one of the city’s most visited neighborhoods, Seattle Center, home of the iconic Space Needle and more recently, Frank Gehry’s colorful blob of a music and cultural museum.

The two glass-clad, six-story, boomerang-shaped buildings are on an eight-acre campus filled with drought-tolerant plants and places to sit and think. The interior also is designed with thinking and collaboration in mind, with most workspaces grouped in open, atrium-like settings surrounded by small meeting places and rooms.

“We’re trying to tackle some things that haven’t been done before. Our work depends on innovation and creativity,” said Choe, explaining why so much of the building is devoted to spaces where people can sit and talk informally.

The shape of the buildings was designed to look like arms reaching out to the places around the globe where the foundation’s grantees work to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people.

There’s room, and plans, for a third building. The first two buildings have space for 1,500 employees.