Cupertino Certain to Approve Apple's Spaceship Campus

[janstett]

At the end they grovelled for an Apple Store in Cupertino but Steve said there just isn't the traffic.

Why not move the employee store to the fringe of the campus and open it to the public? (I guess there are certain things therein which aren't sold to the public).

Apple's plans for their new HQ are very impressive, and I'm sure that this building will be nothing but awesome. But still, it is just an office building of a company that sells consumer products, and if an office building is described as "iconic", I can't help myself to think that we live in a sad and shallow time.

I'm not an architecture student or anything but I am an engineer and appreciate industrial design. I've felt that we haven't really embraced beautiful building design since the Art Deco era (Chrysler Building and Empire State Building, for example).

Since the mass production pre-produced ways of WW II and beyond, I feel we don't build things that are built to last and we don't put craftsmanship into our products and it's reflected in architecture. And no, I'm not a fan of transporter-accident designs like the LA opera house or Bilbao museum in Spain. When you look at Victorian homes you see all kinds of detailing; when you look at old buildings in NYC you see gargoyles and other details; anything modern is mass-produced and non-detailed.

I've seen a lot of corporate HQs and I kind of like this. Apple is innovating and the design is, typically, clean.

 

[RawBert]

Wait, is that Arn?

 

[maclaptop]

Not surprised the way they were fawning over him. Grovel city.

Even the tree huggers sat on their ass & let this project slip thru. A very rare and unheard of exception in the region.

This outta inflate the CEO's ego sufficiently. At least for a few days.

What environmental impact report?

Oh crap that damn shredder ate it.

Now all Apple needs is a life size Disney Animatronics Replica of Steve, and they're set for the next three decades.

 

[frenchroast]

This is only phase one

Little do people know about the future plans for the surrounding J, B, and S buildings.

 

[redAPPLE]

know what disturbs me? the pdf has this "crappy" pictures. i thought the reason the slides looked crappy, was because of video quality.

where those pictures planned to be seen with 3d glasses?

 

[d0minick]

Seriously?

I wouldn't have asked the question. But thank you, for contributing nothing.

How is that a bad question. Underground parking in a state riddled with tremors and earthquakes. I don't live there.

I think a glass house here in Miami would be a issue. And if someone asked I'd answer.

Thanks though, for your remarkably excellent contribution.

 

[Michael73]

Two observations...

• I wonder how tightly people are going to be crowded into this building? After all, the pdf says that employees numbers will go up by 40% but space is only increasing by 20%. Either they aren't at full capacity now or they take the view that putting people in a close environment makes for better collaboration.
  
• Second, is it me or do other people find it interesting that according to the plan, R&D (Johnny Ive & Co.) have their own buildings? I've worked at a couple of companies that have high-end security but they didn't necessarily have separate R&D facilitates, they just had all sorts of security protocols and now biometric authentication to get into sensitive areas. I'm surprised they didn't just label the three R&D buildings as Area 51

 

[G4DP]

Oh look, shiny shiny.

It's a giant glass doughnut. Nothing special or iconic about it. Not even an original design

Sydney Opera House, The Tower of London, The Taj Mahal are iconic buildings. not something that would have been more in place in the 1980's.

It's only got 100's of trees around it to cut some of the carbon created to heat a giant green house.

 

[vartanarsen]

This looks exactly like something that would be in Final Fantasy.

Also, i have a suggestion a retractrable cover over the courtyard for rainy days (like a convertable car). Finally, on top of the retractable dome would be a huge Apple))

 

[TallManNY]

Nice. 9,500 employees currently and and 9,800 above ground parking places. How about a few public bus stops? That would be a heck of a lot more green than putting parking underground (though I really support underground parking).

As for ragging on the politicians, these guys aren't superstars. They are just normal small town community leaders. You should expect them to get flustered. That is what happens to normal people. Exceptional and very smart people can't get elected in places like that (or in many places in the U.S.) because the voters find those folks elitist.

 

[bigcat318]

Has anyone seen a better quality version of his presentation available? The PDF linked on this article is really blurry. Looks like it was just photos taken of the slides.

 

[mcmlxix]

Nice. 9,500 employees currently and and 9,800 above ground parking places. How about a few public bus stops? That would be a heck of a lot more green than putting parking underground (though I really support underground parking).

When Steve made his presentation, he said that Apple already runs its own commuter bus service. If Santa Clara County thinks it needs better transit for its residents, then that’s their responsibility.

 

[frankjl]

First they built their government.

Now they are building their pentagon.

Does take a genius to see where apple is heading with all this.

 

[Nothlit]

Traffic could very well be the largest issue, but this won't be built on virgin land. HP probably contributed to traffic in advance of Apple. I can see residents being put out that the project will close Pruneridge between Wolfe and Tantau, which would adversely affect traffic.

It's not clear from the slides, but it looks like they may be proposing to build a tunnel for Pruneridge under the campus, between the parking garage and the main building.

 

[Cheerwino]

Parking will be in The Cloud.

 

[palmerc2]

I wouldn't have asked the question. But thank you, for contributing nothing.

How is that a bad question. Underground parking in a state riddled with tremors and earthquakes. I don't live there.

I think a glass house here in Miami would be a issue. And if someone asked I'd answer.

Thanks though, for your remarkably excellent contribution.

Contrary to popular belief, earthquakes aren't that bad here. Sure there's a big one every decade but that's it....just like there's big hurricanes every 10 years in Florida. I'm sure part of their plan is having shock absorbers on the bottom of the parking lot. If you want to look into it, all the skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles have them, so the building sways the opposite way of the motion of the quake. I do admit, there is only so much technology can do when a big quake happens, and I just know the big one is around the corner. We haven't had one in a long time now.

 

[farmboy]

I'd hate to be the guy who has to arrange all the furniture. Angled rooms are already a headache; I can't imagine working in wheel wedge shaped rooms.

This is a pretty big building, and the exterior wall arcs would be pretty shallow. Furniture arrangement shouldn't be an issue.

 

[carlgo]

All this gushing over curved glass, like it was a new thing...ever see those construction shows where they build structures in Dubai, etc? Those buildings are vastly more complex and difficult with really complex glass work.

No solar?

It would have been more impressive to refurbish one of those abandoned brick and iron work industrial centers. More difficult, but more useful.

Oh, or they could actually make stuff there...just kidding Foxcon.

 

[acslater017]

Apple's plans for their new HQ are very impressive, and I'm sure that this building will be nothing but awesome. But still, it is just an office building of a company that sells consumer products, and if an office building is described as "iconic", I can't help myself to think that we live in a sad and shallow time.

Well Americans don't really have huge cathedrals or 1,000 year-old palaces. They have wonderful natural wonders (Grand Canyon, Yosemite) and wonderful man-made structures.

What is the Golden Gate Bridge but a highway between San Francisco and Marin? The Empire State Building is just an office building, like the World Trade Center was. Transamerica Pyramid, Sears Tower, etc.

It'll be iconic because it's a beautiful design from a familiar American company. Not because it's culturally significant, historic, etc.

 

[drewisanapple]

I have to say, if you're concerned there's a hard task of going from one side to the other, what's to say there isn't an underground level, or the first floor, that has easy of that, and the courtyard starts above the first floor, it's not to terribly hard to see.

But even if not, it'd be harder to snake between the current HP buildings to visit departments each day. The uniform design is outstanding.

 

[satcomer]

I thought two things when I first saw the pdf presentation. The first is they just took the idea of the Pentagon and just rounded the design. The second is they were sitting around the breakfast table and someone had a donut out and that inspired them.

However in 1,2 3 the greenies will come out of wild with the idea of asking Apple where the solar panels are.

 

[musukosan]

Signed on just to say how terrible this guy is. What a bad public speaker. He's making up words. He evades every question. He sounds so buddy-buddy with Steve instead of a leader of the people who elected him. There's no grave concern with losing Apple to Mountain View, so quit trying to stick in Steve. And I didn't know Apple bought HP

Apple didn't buy HP, they bought the land and buildings HP use to own.

 

[ranReloaded]

Can't wait to see what Google shows to the Mountain View Council next month

 

[mcmlxix]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

I love how Apple has tried it's best over the years to be environmentally friendly. Most companies simply do not care.

The company I work for, a zillion times bigger than Apple, and also based in the Bay Area, is VERY proactive with $green$ initiatives.

 

[cfountain72]

iCollider

Obviously it's a design for the new iCollider...