IBM established its first California roots in San Jose during World War II, when in 1943 forty-three employees and their families relocated from the East Coast to open IBM Card Manufacturing Plant Number 5 at 16th and St. John Streets. In 1952, IBM opened its first West Coast laboratory in San Jose, where researchers developed the first magnetic disk storage device, a breakthrough that transformed the technology industry and helped propel San Jose onto the national stage. That success led to the creation of the two hundred ten-acre Cottle Road Campus in South San Jose, a pioneering research and manufacturing complex that helped establish the industrial campus concept in the early 1950s through low-rise buildings spread across a landscaped setting with parking, art, a cafeteria, and lounge space. At the campus, Advanced Research Building 025 became an important laboratory in the 1950s and 1960s. Its five interconnected single-story wings used glass walls, courtyards, shaded walkways, and outdoor spaces to bring daylight inside, connect interiors with the landscape, and encourage employee interaction, creativity, and productivity. Built from brick, glass, steel, aluminum canopies, sculpture, and multi-colored ceramic murals, Building 025 also helped define a new Modernist industrial style in the 1950s by combining industrial materials, architecture, and art in a careful, sensitive design.
