Cupertino.org Posts More Details about Apple's New 'Spaceship' Campus

[*LTD*]

I knew it.

Only a matter of time before the "Apple is too decadent in an age where there are so many poor and underprivileged people" folks showed up in this thread.

Would you rather see a bloody golf course there? Balls rolling into little holes does not produce innovations in tech that improve the quality of our work and play.

Wanna see *real* waste? Here you go:

http://www.augusta.com/masters/coursetour/

That's right. Around 150 acres of land. Butchered, "manicured", and "reserved" for *******s in khakis with carbon fibre sticks. No, it's not open for families and children to enjoy themselves and the nature around them. No, it's not a protected park or wildlife reserve. No, it's not a place of learning, home to a university campus.

It's a series of man-made holes, sand-filled islands and water features that displace the natural environment that was there in order to facilitate a GAME that is reserved for a certain class of society that falls into a certain income bracket. No, kids can't play in the sand, and families can't enjoy picnics there.

So before anyone even dreams or otherwise conceives to criticize Apple for using land in order to CREATE something of real value that EVERYONE can enjoy, they should first look at all the *real* waste of land and resources happening elsewhere.

 

[diego]

As an urban planning student specializing in urban design, I can say that this campus is a typical example of the theory of Landscape Urbanism. You can find out more about it on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_urbanism)... but it basically means that landscape is the most important aspect of urbanism. As an urban planner, I think that landscape urbanism is not the best answer to urban growth mainly because it promotes sprawl but disguised in a more beautiful and 'sustainable' way. Huge 'natural' landscape buffers are one of its elements, which are obviously present in this project, but they end up isolating uses and people. If anyone is interested in a thorough description and criticism of landscape urbanism, check out this conference by Andres Duany, who is one of the precursors of New Urbanism: http://ecom.mediasite.com/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=470632346283426e8b0dfa1b184afd7b1d

If anyone wants to talk more about this feel free to contact me.

 

[cvaldes]

All I can say is that this building is going to attract gawkers from everywhere. One thing bothers me, though: have they talked about plans for food service inside this unusual building? One of the big attractions of working at Google is that they have superb food service, and Apple shouldn't scrimp on this!

Steve has commented on this.

Apple's senior management team does not believe in extravagant benefits for its employees like what happens at the Googleplex because they think it's a distraction. They're more focused on increasing shareholder value (most Apple employees have an interest since they have stock option grants or actual holdings via ESPP).

Steve has said he wants to the stock price to go up, so it benefits all employees; they can decide what to spend the money on, whether it be a new car, house, vacations, charitable contributions, etc.

Also, the extravagant benefits end up being unbalanced, typically weighed toward those working at the corporate HQ while short-changing those who work elsewhere.

Apple's cafeteria is pretty modest compared to those of Google and aren't totally underwritten by the company. That's more fair to those who aren't eating at the cafeteria.

Apple also seems to distribute far less soft goods (i.e., logo apparel) than most of their Silicon Valley brethren, but hand out many more of the company's products to employees.

 

[SeattleMoose]

Wow!!!

I REALLY love the new design.....looks like a SciFi space station.

Very fitting structure for the world's #1 tech company.

Will be interesting to see what they do with the inside courtyard.

And most importantly .... hope Steve is sitting in his new office in 5 years.

 

[kf90210]

Apple should make their own University. University of Apple or University of Cupertino.... and then hook up all the students with jobs at Apple once they finish in their field of study....

 

[Laird Knox]

2. Am I the only one who thinks building this in California, an increasingly terrible state for taxes (and a lot of other business related things) is not the best idea? I guess this generation of Tech czars are just too liberal and have so much money that they can afford to cost themselves (and the company) money because they want to stay in beautiful Northern California where all the rest of the cool liberal visionaries live. Maybe 30 years from now when more pragmatic people are running Google, eBay, Apple and Oracle they will think about locating the business headquarters in Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida etc, etc, etc. I guess now they're just making too much money to care about a few billion every year needlessly lost to the welfare state of California.

Yeah and relocating 10,000 people is trivial.

 

[Eric S.]

It's silly. Do I really want to traverse a forest to reach another point on the circumference? Offices should be in close proximity.

 

[carlgo]

The more I see of this thing the less I like it.

It is not an ergo-building.

It is not an eco-building.

It is an ego-building.

Looks like an iFort to hold off the unemployed masses.

Made of the worst possible building material.

No solar? What?

Looks like something out of a 1938 issue of Popular Science. Oooooh, round buildings (imagine a Homer voice like in oooh, donuts).

A stupid, sterile, inefficient, overly expensive, unattractive building evidently conceived by someone who thought he could design buildings, but can't. All the underlings are probably all in a circle around him fumbling over themselves in congratulations. Somebody at Apple needs to be an adult and be brave and stand up to this crap. Or, maybe the board of directors get paid to be smart and useful?

----------

It's quite annoying that the chief architects name hasn't been used publicly by Steve Jobs once. I don't understand why when he's possibly the most famous Architect of this Generation. Guess they just wanna look like they're the designers of everything.

You are assuming that an actual architect conceived this thing. Jobs is only hiring a firm to do the details, a job he considers functionary and not worthy of mention.

 

[deconstruct60]

Can you imagine walking around the perimeter hallways several times trying to locate an office. Perhaps the receptionist will hand visitors an iPod Touch with GPS so they won't get frustrated.

No sane business in Silicon Valley lets visitors roam unaccompanied around their HQ. No escort, no movement. At Apple, king of secrets , that is likely even more true.

Where visitors can just "go" is likely a very small subset of the building. Where most employees people will move on a day-to-day basis is a subset of the building. If the sections are numbered it won't be hard to find your way. Section 01 Room 2015 , Section 5 Room 3042 , etc.

GPS to find your way around a building ...... or to the corner store ... kind of wonder if people will outsource too much high level cognitive workload out of the brains at some point. The building is not that big where a simple map and common sense won't be effective tools.

 

[ckelley]

The more I see of this thing the less I like it.

It is not an ergo-building.

It is not an eco-building.

It is an ego-building.

Looks like an iFort to hold off the unemployed masses.

Made of the worst possible building material.

No solar? What?

Looks like something out of a 1938 issue of Popular Science. Oooooh, round buildings (imagine a Homer voice like in oooh, donuts).

A stupid, sterile, inefficient, overly expensive, unattractive building evidently conceived by someone who thought he could design buildings, but can't. All the underlings are probably all in a circle around him fumbling over themselves in congratulations. Somebody at Apple needs to be an adult and be brave and stand up to this crap. Or, maybe the board of directors get paid to be smart and useful?

----------



You are assuming that an actual architect conceived this thing. Jobs is only hiring a firm to do the details, a job he considers functionary and not worthy of mention.

You didn't even look at the stuff, did you? The entire roof of the parking structure is solar panels. The building and construction will more than likely be a high grade of LEED certification. Glass is the worst possible material? Let's get on telling that to everyone else who uses glass in construction...

To people complaining about walking around the building and how it's inefficient... I bet you've never been inside the Pentagon. For being the size it is and all that it holds, it's probably one of the easiest buildings I've had the pleasure of navigating through. It's not that hard when you know where you're going and the time to walk around isn't much, 15-20 minutes max.

I guarantee you that it doesn't take more than 15 or 20 minutes to walk around the entire Apple building. Look at the plans, page 4/18 for example. You can see the elevators and bathrooms, so you can take an idea of scale for a single human being and the average speed of walking and realize that it looks huge on paper, but it's not all that huge in reality.

When I worked at a large company in downtown Pittsburgh, we had offices and departments strung throughout 5 buildings downtown. If I wanted to go to the main building for something and then back to my office, it was easily a 20 minute trip through multiple security zones, multiple elevators, having to walk outside through whatever elements, whether it be rain or heat or snow and frigid temperatures and traffic. Right now, I know Apple employees who work in buildings quite far from 1 Infinite Loop, so if they had to go there for instance or to another, it's easily a 20-30 minute trip, use of their car or shuttles. This will be great for getting everyone important under one roof (for the most part, the research buildings and other things are obviously separate) and sparking more collaboration, which leads to greater efficiency, which is always a good thing.

 

[RawBert]

Why does the grass on the first pic look all long and dry? Like an abandoned house lawn.

 

[DanteMann]

This just looks like a future Ikea Store. It really seems like Ikea designers and Apple designers are one in the same. The Apple stores....Ikea, The Apple laptops look like the dummy laptops you see in Ikea stores dispalys. It just leaves you with a cheap feeling. Here's hoping Apple moves away from the cheap Ikea look.

 

[the8thark]

I knew it.

Only a matter of time before the "Apple is too decadent in an age where there are so many poor and underprivileged people" showed up in this thread.

This. Well said.

This building will employ a lot of people:
In it's construction
Companies to make the materials needed for the building construction
To keep the grounds in pristine condition
Cleaners to make sure the building is always in tiptop shape
Chefs/cooks to keep the cafeteria there always ready to feed the employees
Apple's legal team to make sure all the building codes and other legal stuff is all in check
etc etc

So the building is a plus for the area. And it'll bring tourism too. It'll be a big draw card for the area. Apple earnt their 70+ Billions. And I think it's a good thing to spend some of it on. At least this is useful unlike carparks or golf courses or ugly warehouses. And heck if it's good enough the building could appear in modern architecture books of the future.

 

[iZac]

Awww, come on Cupertino, give us some vectors, not rasterised plans!

 

[winston1236]

wow hopefully the final version stays like what is shown here

----------

I knew it.

Only a matter of time before the "Apple is too decadent in an age where there are so many poor and underprivileged people" showed up in this thread.

Would you rather see a bloody golf course there? Balls rolling into little holes does not produce innovations in tech that improve the quality of our work and play.

Wanna see *real* waste? Here you go:

http://www.augusta.com/masters/coursetour/

That's right. Around 150 acres of land. Butchered, "manicured", and "reserved" for *******s in khakis with carbon fibre sticks. No, it's not open for families and children to enjoy themselves and the nature around them. No, it's not a protected park or wildlife reserve. No, it's not a place of learning, home to a university campus.

It's a series of man-made holes, sand-filled islands and water features that displace the natural environment that was there in order to facilitate a GAME that is reserved for a certain class of society that falls into a certain income bracket. No, kids can't play in the sand, and families can't enjoy picnics there.

So before anyone even dreams or otherwise conceives to criticize Apple for using land in order to CREATE something of real value that EVERYONE can enjoy, they should first look at all the *real* waste of land and resources happening elsewhere.

nothing to add to that post, you nailed it

 

[toddybody]

Ha ha! I can see it now, faithful Apple-ites will get married inside of it.

 

[AwakenedLands]

Good to see Apple's cash reserves are being spent on important things. No extravagance there.

 

[deconstruct60]

The 1,000 person auditorium complete with exhibit area is interesting. Who needs Moscone or Yerba Buena now. I wonder how many people their current Town Hall auditorium houses?

The Flint Center (also in Cupertino ) can house 2,000 (http://www.flintcenter.com/ ). It isn't "size" that matters for these lager press events it is the location and large amount of visitor parking. There are news org and TV crews/studios in SF. It is also closer to SFO and numerous hotels.

Yerba Buena's capacity is 757. If they just want to do "bigger" and closer to Cupertino they could have done that long ago.

For the smaller press briefings, this new auditorium will likely be overkill.

I'm not sure Apple would want to bring 700+ visitors to their campus on a work day. It isn't like there are going to be 700+ empty parking places set aside for "press conference" days. An extra 200, sure.

 

[malexgreen]

First of all the rooms inside don't have to be totally round, they can have flat walls and a rounded window. As for the weather, it rains very little in cupertino, so i doubt this is much of a concern. It's SoCal. Won't kill people to take a walk around the building a couple of time a year.

It's NorCal and it rains cats and dogs in the winter...

 

[deconstruct60]

Why does the grass on the first pic look all long and dry? Like an abandoned house lawn.

Because it is Northern California (which is somewhat arid). That's what many of the natural hills, valleys look like (at least post gold rush settlement occupation). Carefully manicured green grass lawns are artificial.

They need grass and vegetation that isn't going to require installing a huge sprinkler system. For portions of the year the hills around the valley not filled with Redwoods go brown. That's normal.

http://running.stanford.edu/CampusRuns.htm

Look at the pics for the "Dish" , "Lag" , and "Castle" runs.

What I think they are trying to do is put an Arboretum around the outside of the building's perimeter. They'll have to do periodic maintenance so that it doesn't beome a "brush fire" hazard, but there won't be a need to "mow the lawn" every week either. [ Again, the current HP campus a trees around the edges of the campus also so this isn't a big shift in approach. ]

The inner "garden" is probably more likely to get green grass for the periodic "company party on the lawn" events. On the site plan there is ramp coming up out of the underground infrastructure where mowers/trucks/landscape vehicles can enter inner area. (same issue with getting around. There are above ground walkways but wouldn't be hard to put a bit more gloomy (on sunny days) underground counterparts under at least some of them.


While it does normally rains like cats in dogs in the core Winter months in NorCal..... it often, over last two decades, has not rained much some years either. Yet another reason why don't want 3 acres of manicured grass to water as a "moat" around the building.

 

[SkywalkerMac]

it's like some giant stargate. Steve will use it to bring his friends to earth.
The portal used in "the event" was something like this.

 

[claus1225]

at an age where everyone is building super tall buildings, i quite like this simplicity of this building. it really blends into the environment. i really wish future buildings can all look like this

i bet the employees would want to actually live in this building.

 

[*LTD*]

at an age where everyone is building super tall buildings, i quite like this simplicity of this building. it really blends into the environment. i really wish future buildings can all look like this

i bet the employees would want to actually live in this building.

Good point. it looks very organic, and not like some dark, dank, concrete monstrosity.

It looks typical of Apple, which is a good thing. I'd call the entire building "user-oriented." Much like Apple's main priority. As within, so without, etc.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Apple doesn't make much of anything anymore.



More accurately put this is more like "we have routinely hired folks expert in making buildings with lots of glass so we are very familiar with what we can ask for and get. "




Typical apple's spin on how magical they are at creation. The reality is that Apple buys lots of "magical" stuff that is available from anyone else who has the money to buy it. There is lots of stuff Apple contractors do that somehow turns into "Apple" magic when it comes time to crow about it in public. There is some stuff Apple does. Other stuff they just claim credit because signed the check.

Thanks for the explanation. I was thinking it was something along those lines but with the typical Jobs stroking his own ego spin.

 

[wilhoitm]

It's quite annoying that the chief architects name hasn't been used publicly by Steve Jobs once. I don't understand why when he's possibly the most famous Architect of this Generation. Guess they just wanna look like they're the designers of everything.

What are you talking about? His firms name is all over the plans. You iHaters tickle me sometimes.