What Apple's and Google's Headquarters Plans Reveal About Their Cultures

[eltaurus]

Originally Posted by Eugene-DL

Apple - Connected ecosystem
Google - Fragmented (even their ideas are this and that)

Exactly

[IJ Reilly]

Originally Posted by smithrh

Props for the phrenology mention...

Inappropriate though it may be.

Apple's campus also has to be seen as a monument to Steve, it's his aesthetic through and through. At the same time, Steve's aesthetic is engrained in the company's culture, so in that sense the building still fits Apple's image.

Architecture as corporate image, though... this concept is fraught with practical problems. Corporations have often tried to use their headquarters buildings as logos, with very mixed success. Failure, mainly.

[Chupa Chupa]

Originally Posted by bretm

I knew I'd seen this before! Yeah, they blew this place up after the 96 Olympics in ATL.

That's because it was a dated POS stadium like the rest of the 1960s era multi-purpose ashtray stadiums. Jack of all trades, master of none.

But I'm not sure what a bad stadium design has to do with Apple's building design, or say a slightly older infinite loop shaped office building, the world's largest... The Pentagon.

[globalhemp]

Apple's new headquarters resembles the name of the street address of its current headquarters -- One Infinite Loop.

On the other hand, the circular design is reminiscent of the United Kingdom's GCHQ -- which is the "listening headquarters" of the UK. In other words, the building where "Big Brother is watching you." The UK's equivalent of the US's NSA.



http://www.gchq.gov.uk/Pages/homepage.aspx

There is a negative connotation with this in today's world when you think of CISPA and SOPA which can best be portrayed in the 1998 movie "Enemy of the State" where actor Gene Hackman refers to the NSA's supercomputers use in "Project Echelon."

I'm not saying Apple is "Big Brother" ... what I am saying is that its rather difficult for me to view the building and not think about the original circular shaped building located in the UK.

[Eric E. Schmidt]

apple's campus is a mix between george clintons funkiest dream and "we're too good for this planet, beam us up".

i'm sure the roof panels can be arranged in patterns as a means to communicate with the fleet.

[ianGr]

With the Apple Infinite Loop design you can continually travel inside in either direction. It is philosophically perfect and congruent with their address at 1 Infinite Loop, so where exactly will this be, because they will undoubtedly want even their address to be philosophically perfect and beautiful.

Points to Apple also for the solar panels entirely covering the roof.

Someone noted the similarity between the Apple circle and the Atlanta Olympic stadium, but I guess that means it is also similar to every other circle in the universe. In contrast, Google's headquarters is more like the London Olympics LOGO!

[Ahheck01]

"Ultimately, it comes down to taste." ~Steve Jobs

[ianGr]

Originally Posted by ianGr

where exactly will this be, because they will undoubtedly want even their address to be philosophically perfect and beautiful.

88 Infinite Loop ??

[sc4rf4c3]

I hate to say this but Google's HQ looks like a housing project.

[notjustjay]

Originally Posted by SockRolid

You're either born with an aesthetic sense or you're not.
Sorry Google. You weren't.

Technically, neither was Apple.

[Shrink]

Originally Posted by bandalay

D
Analyzing architecture like this is akin to phrenology.

Originally Posted by smithrh

Props for the phrenology mention...

Originally Posted by IJ Reilly

Inappropriate though it may be.

Thanks, IJ Reilly, you got there before me.

I don't get the phrenology reference at all.

[Rogifan]

Originally Posted by notjustjay

Apple seems to be a very top-down, driven company. The people at the top have a very precise idea of exactly what they want -- Steve Jobs was the penultimate example -- and the rest of the company strives to make it happen.

Google strikes me as the opposite. They have some general goals, but employees are encouraged to experiment. "Hey, I have an idea that could be great!" And they're willing to try lots of things, hoping to stumble upon something great.

Both approaches have different strengths and weaknesses. The Google approach means they try lots of things that don't really work, possibly wasting time and money, but the employees at least feel like their time and input are valued.

With the Apple approach, if they get it right, it works beautifully and it really helps their image as this magical company that churns out hit after hit and can do no wrong (because we don't get to see the ones that didn't make it out of their labs), but then you get all these comments about how they're "not innovating" because we don't see, and don't know, what's going on in there. Also, if/when Ives & Cook guess something wrong, once the market isn't quick to embrace their latest and greatest, that could be the beginning of a slippery slope.

From Tim Cook's Bloomberg/Businessweek interview last December:

How do you interact with design? You don’t have meetings. You don’t have a formal process. Do you just wander down, and you and Jony look at stuff?

I wouldn’t say we don’t have meetings. I wouldn’t go that far. I’m talking about how the kernels of ideas are born. We want ideas coming from all of our 80,000 people, not five or three. A much smaller number of people have to decide and edit and move forward, but you want ideas coming from everywhere. You want people to explore. So that’s what I was talking about before.

[IJ Reilly]

Originally Posted by Shrink

Thanks, IJ Reilly, you got there before me.

I don't get the phrenology reference at all.

A reference to pseudoscience, I presume. Nearly everyone spends most of their lives inhabiting buildings created by people with deliberation and intent -- and yet, many still seem to believe that architecture is random and without discernible symbolism or meaning.

[monkor]

This is perhaps the dumbest article I've read that's been featured on this site. This is like Soviet propaganda, especially considering one picture is a freaking sketch and the other is a filtered wonder. What kind of emotions do you expect a reader to have? The Large Hadron Collider looks like a disheveled mess too, and it's perhaps one of the most impressive things ever built and in it? Some pretty incredible ideas.

[tdtran1025]

Scientific discoveries are mostly acts of serendipity. Rigid mentality at best can only usher professionalism. Let's how it pans out.

[xxnemoxx]

I'd love to ride my scooter, skateboard, or bike in circles at the Apple Campus lol

[ArtOfWarfare]

Google, dotting the space with the same stupid shape again and again.

[CrickettGrrrl]

The professor sounds more like an astrologer doing Apple & Google horoscopes than an architectural analysis.

[IJ Reilly]

Originally Posted by IJ Reilly

A reference to pseudoscience, I presume. Nearly everyone spends most of their lives inhabiting buildings created by people with deliberation and intent -- and yet, many still seem to believe that architecture is random and without discernible symbolism or meaning.

Originally Posted by CrickettGrrrl

The professor sounds more like an astrologer doing Apple & Google horoscopes than an architectural analysis.

And there we go.

[ThunderSkunk]

Keep in mind, renderings always look considerably better than the finished product.

Whenever you see atrocious tenaments, somewhere on a shelf there's a beautiful artistic rendering showing it draped in lush greenery and gleaming in the sunshine.

On a bad day, Apples design will still look how it looks on a good day.
On a bad day, Googles will look like urban sprawl.

[samcraig]

So what will Samsung's new campus look like?

[macUser2007]

The design of each campus reflects the taste and esthetic vision of the leaders of each company.

And it does seem to closely correspond to the design sense of the founders of each company.

But Jobs is no longer alive (although Ive seems to be carrying the torch now) and Google did hire some rather talented designers for Android, such as Matias Duarte.

Duarte doesn't quite have the clean design sensibilities of Ive, but Android is at least moving in the right direction esthetically (which MS never did).

[Chimp]

Originally Posted by SockRolid

You're either born with an aesthetic sense or you're not.

What a load of elitist drivel. Apple do hold design in high regard, and its part of why I love their products but you're talking absolute nonsense. You aren't born with aesthetic sense, you develop it. Obviously, if you've got to adulthood and not developed it by that point, it's probably not going to come but to posit that it's something you're born with is utter nonsense. Grow up.

[0815]

Originally Posted by samcraig

So what will Samsung's new campus look like?

It will look like Apples campus - but have a much bigger radius ... and they will call it a new invention.

They will also use cheap plastic instead of the continues high quality glass windows.

[iMacFarlane]

Originally Posted by false

I think Apples building design reflects more on their address rather than culture. Their campus is on Infinite Loop (St. Rd.?) A circle is a representation of an infinite loop.

The address is 1 Infinite Loop. There is no street, road, lane, boulevard, way, or bypass. Loop is commonly used in naming streets that, well, are loops.

I remember the first time I saw the address, I thought it was brilliant. Props to the programmers!