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.
My bad, there is solar. Didn't see the parking structure.
Actually, I love many glass buildings for their aesthetics, all colorful and shiny. I also like old buildings made of brick and stone. I notice that many glass buildings tend to look dated after a few years, whereas the better solid buildings have lots of architectural details and look great for hundreds of years.
Will the Apple building look good in a few decades? Or will it look like some "space age" structure built in the '50s along Route 66?
Even hideously expensive and heavy multiple-wall glass has a very low R-value. There are all sorts of codes regarding window area in homes which is why in many areas you see lots of wall and small window areas on newer houses. Perhaps industrial buildings have more lenient standards.
Big building often have no heating as the thousands of occupants and machines heat them, but all this requires huge AC systems to cool things down.
If you follow those construction shows, note that the huge glass buildings going up in the Middle East have all sorts of elaborate shades and schemes to promote air flow and shading from adjacent structures.
So, I stand by the statement that glass buildings are inefficient. And that not that many of them stand the test of time aesthetically, but that is just opinion.
Only takes 15-20 minutes to walk to the furthest office? That's a half-hour round trip! That's longer than many commutes! Ol' Steve is going to see all these people walking endlessly around and a memo will be put out requiring a hall pass...
What the place needs is a Segway highway running around it.
Personally, I would rather see blighted areas revived than new ground broken.
But, one smart thing is that there is parking. Realistic.
