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Apple Campus 2 Drone Video Shows Progress on Ring-Shaped Main Building, Research Facilities
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Used wasn't my word, actually, but fair enough given that the point we are making is the same. Many of the stories on MR tease with this "privacy fence" concept, as if the thing Apple is building is some kind of big secret, like the next iPhone or some such. How secret can 3M square feet of office building be? Like, not at all? Pretty silly. Hell, they're even allowing drone videos to be made of the construction site.
For persons who claim Apple is coasting, well, here is news for, that's pretty much every company. Between 1998 and 2001, Apple coasted on the Mac. Each year, it was incremental upgrades, PowerPC now at 867 Mhz. The iPod years were similar, they reiterated it to the point once you had one it was enough. I really don't see what more can be done other than the car. The Watch is finally coming into its own with Watch OS 3. If you look at the iPod and iTunes Music Store, they were reactionary to the industry at the time which had a plethora of crappy MP3 players and rampant piracy from Kazaa and Napster. Right now, Tesla is doing something with autonomous vehicles, they are pioneers and in this industry I have realized, its usually not the best. Case in point: XEROX, Creative Nomads, Sony/Nokia, Microsoft who all pushed technologies such as the GUI, MP3 Player, Smartphone, Mobile OS respectively.
We also need to look beyond the doom and gloom nature of the rise and fall nature of company's in the 70's, 80's and 90's and to some extent the early 2000's. If anything, a company is likely to become weaker or consumed by a larger company.
A Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Oracle are here to stay for very long time. They know the history so they are ensuring they don't become the next Friendster, IBM, pre-1997 Apple, pre-2014 Microsoft and Sun Microsystems respectively.
The reality in some ways, we all need these companies because they in some way provide an essential service or aesthetically preferable depending on the user. Facebooks social network is just so powerful and interconnected, every business and most of your family and friends are on it. Microsoft Windows is the defacto standard operating system along with their productivity suite, Apple really makes great hardware, Google makes great services, every government uses Oracle software, whether its for storing all the data, payroll, ERP, HR etc.
We also need to look beyond the doom and gloom nature of the rise and fall nature of company's in the 70's, 80's and 90's and to some extent the early 2000's. If anything, a company is likely to become weaker or consumed by a larger company.
A Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Oracle are here to stay for very long time. They know the history so they are ensuring they don't become the next Friendster, IBM, pre-1997 Apple, pre-2014 Microsoft and Sun Microsystems respectively.
The reality in some ways, we all need these companies because they in some way provide an essential service or aesthetically preferable depending on the user. Facebooks social network is just so powerful and interconnected, every business and most of your family and friends are on it. Microsoft Windows is the defacto standard operating system along with their productivity suite, Apple really makes great hardware, Google makes great services, every government uses Oracle software, whether its for storing all the data, payroll, ERP, HR etc.
Wow. Apple is incredible. Can't wait to see the new products they release in the future, especially the rumored iCar.
The now apparent gigantic scale of this building cements an impression of Apple that may hurt the company. Huge organizations generally find it impossible to be anything other than impersonal. Apple seeks to sustain an image of connection - to you the person, the individual, the member of a relatively small intimate community. This building will become a universally recognized landmark (visible from space orbit) and synonymous with Apple. People will find it to be of inhuman scale and ergo find Apple to have grown to inhuman scale.
Blame growth for that. You can't expect Apple to remain a startup forever with 31 employees. Neither is Google or Facebook. The company wants to centralize the majority of their employees in one location. What's so hard to understand about that? They are a business, they don't want to keep paying renters millions of dollars around expensive Silicon Valley; while at the same time suffering from the disconnect of having scattered employees here and there. Steve Jobs mentality was to create a culture and at the same time have a company as big as IBM, but with different ideals, which creates a great product you can sell.
The intention was not to be some special community hub. Even the old campus non-employees can't just visit unless they are invited. The space ship design should actually be seen as being communal and at the same time its about efficiency and creating serendipity. The ultimate productivity boost though is being able to scoot over from the main campus building to R&D; instead of driving out of town to reach there. Its about saving money in the long run by holding product launch events maybe future WWDC's and lowering the price of admission.
There is another take on this building. Many people believe that people react to their environment. That you think and act different depending on your surroundings. Apple wants their employees to be creative and work together. This building will they hope be a factor in shaping future products.
Yes it will also be iconic and provide Apple with a image for marketing
I think Steve Jobs was thinking about both of these points of view. How it will effect the performance of those inside and how those outside will see it as a symbol.
The concept of a loop has been at Apple headquarters for decades. Remember their street address was always "1 Infinite Loop", I assume the street makes a connected loop. Now their building will do the same thing
Yes it will also be iconic and provide Apple with a image for marketing
I think Steve Jobs was thinking about both of these points of view. How it will effect the performance of those inside and how those outside will see it as a symbol.
The concept of a loop has been at Apple headquarters for decades. Remember their street address was always "1 Infinite Loop", I assume the street makes a connected loop. Now their building will do the same thing
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My wife works @ Apple and she is a building that is rented - she spends a lot of time going to different buildings for meetings. Having it all closer together is much better for a lot of employees.
I don't think insulation is a big factor in the way they use it (to be effective, insulation would need to be applied evenly). No, I think, as somebody else already said, it is mainly to allow for landscaping without adding much weight (which in turn means the building structures below need to be less strong and thus resources in term of concrete and steel are saved).
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In Jobs' presentation to the Cupertino city council just linked above, Jobs mentioned that their Infinite Loop campus holds about 2800 people but that they had about 12'000 employees in the greater Cupertino area. That means that 75% of Apple's 'headquarter-employees' were scattered over multiple sites. And that was five years ago. Apple's total number of employees has about doubled since then.
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Hilarious. If you can't think of anything else send up the effin drone again.
Apple plans to finish construction on its second campus at the end of 2016, giving the company five more months to wrap up work at the location. As the deadline approaches, construction is continuing at a rapid pace, as seen in a new July update video shared by drone pilot Duncan Sinfield.
Sinfield's July video features a complete overview of the different buildings that are going up on the campus, along with details on the progress that's been made over the course of the last month. Solar panels and HVAC units are continuing to be added to the roof of the main ring-shaped building, and the solar panels on the roof of the parking garage are almost all in place.
Heavy machinery that will allow Apple to start the landscaping process has been transported to the campus, so we may soon see progress on the giant dirt pile. The dirt will support more than 7,000 trees and other greenery, including many citrus trees.
A second Apple Campus 2 drone video from Matthew Roberts shows a nearly-completed R&D facility, located on Tantau avenue, and gives a close look at the 100,000 square foot fitness center that will be available to employees.
Earlier this year, Apple began taking down the green privacy fence surrounding the entire campus, replacing it with a shorter chain-link fence. Construction crews often leave the gates at the campus open, allowing passersby to get a close-up look at the ongoing construction.
Apple plans to complete work on Apple Campus 2 at the end of 2016, with employees set to start occupying the facility at the beginning of 2017.
Article Link: Apple Campus 2 Drone Video Shows Progress on Ring-Shaped Main Building, Research Facilities
They spent 10 billion on R&D last year.
Somethings up. The Apple Board of Directors approved that budget. Something BIG is up.
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Apple Co is just consolidating the work force. They have dozens of building they lease, scattered all over the place.
Now they can work on site together. And besides. The corporate headquarters only costs them several weeks sales.
Too late.
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They should invent something that allows one to turn down or mute the audio in videos.
I will never understand why they chose a circle shape instead of an apple. An Apple from space would have been so cool.
Clinical, boring, IMHO.
Clinical, boring, IMHO.
The consolidation of R & D capability to the one R & D building on the main campus will have a much more profound impact on how the design teams work and the timing of the design cycle than anything else in the construction project.
The rest of the project is about centralizing Apple's core management and their support teams. Not just in AC2 but also in the original campus and buildings Apple owns instead of the many they are leasing around the South Bay.
If you are creating space for interaction, a ring plan is actually not very conducive (especially one of this size), which is why it is not often used. From that standpoint, the boring old box is much better, which is why it is used so often. But Steve hated boring old boxes. He also thought he knew a lot more about architecture than he actually did. This building happened because it is the design Steve wanted; I doubt any architect would have recommended it as a starting point.
From an urban design standpoint, Apple's new campus is a throwback to the 1970s. It's about as isolated from the urban grid as any building could be. The only way it interacts with the street and the rest of the community is through traffic. So, deliberately or not, it makes a very definite statement that the company is apart, not connected. Inward looking, not looking out. Architecture, in addition to being a practical art, is an art of symbolism. As an object the building might be wonderful to look at (from the air, at least) but on a functional and symbolic level, it's a colossal failure.
