Massive Glass Window Panels Being Installed at Apple Campus 2

[Robert.Walter]

What is interesting to me is the variations in height (looks like 3 & 4 stories) and gaps between the segments.

It looks as though this is not a continuous building. But a series of independent curved segments grouped in a circular fashion to approximate a circular building.

It will be interesting to see if these gaps are filled in and all segments are raised to 4 stories.

 

[macintologist]

Structural glazing is very very strong to be in such large panes of glass. Just like the structural glass uses in glass stairs at Apple stores...
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Look at the renderings. Center is a large round garden that they can criss cross in the beautiful southern california weather to go to a meeting.

It's northern california.

 

[Rogifan]

What is interesting to me is the variations in height (looks like 3 & 4 stories) and gaps between the segments.

It looks as though this is not a continuous building. But a series of independent curved segments grouped in a circular fashion to approximate a circular building.

It will be interesting to see if these gaps are filled in and all segments are raised to 4 stories.

This is what Ive said in that New Yorker piece:

“You have a kit of elements and you just make lots of them,” he said, happily. Ive’s studio largely designed the building’s “void slabs”: forty-four hundred precast-concrete units that will have a floor on one side, a ceiling on the other, and a cooling system between them. They are being manufactured in an Apple-built factory in Woodland, California. “We’re assembling rather than building,” Ive said.

 

[Keirasplace]

It's northern california.

Unless someone thinks walking 2-3 minutes outside in the few days it's actually cool is a burden,
it doesn't really change the argument. It's really temperate most of the time.
More comfortable than southern California.

 

[flowsy]

Love the "stepped"(?) hill. Is it normal to do that or just Apple not wanting an ugly ass hill ruining the sight?

 

[topmounter]

With just 12 months to go until Apple's second "spaceship" campus is scheduled to be completed, construction crews are hard at work on the main ring-shaped building and several auxiliary buildings, including the underground auditorium, a visitor's center, and a set of research and development buildings.

Drone pilot Duncan Sinfield today shared another monthly campus update video with MacRumors, giving us a look at how construction has progressed since December. Late last month and early this month, enough of the main building was completed that the unique, curved glass windows could start going up. In the video, you'll see the first window panels on the building, both at the exterior and the interior of the ring.

Significant progress has been made on the underground auditorium, and the Tantau research and development buildings are taking shape and filling out.

With construction growing closer to completion, work on the landscape may soon begin. Apple's second campus will feature 80 percent green space, a central garden with outdoor dining areas, and more than 300 species of trees, including a variety of fruit trees. Underground structures like parking facilities and the auditorium will be covered with greenery.

When finished, the campus will include the 2.8 million square foot ring-shaped main building, several parking structures, a 100,000 square foot fitness center, a 120,000 square foot auditorium, and a dedicated visitor's center with an observation deck, cafe, and Apple Store.

Article Link: Massive Glass Window Panels Being Installed at Apple Campus 2

Oh wow they are installing windows on an office building. How magical.

 

[manu chao]

What is interesting to me is the variations in height (looks like 3 & 4 stories) and gaps between the segments.

It looks as though this is not a continuous building. But a series of independent curved segments grouped in a circular fashion to approximate a circular building.

It will be interesting to see if these gaps are filled in and all segments are raised to 4 stories.

You haven't seen any of the renderings of the complete project? It will be a complete 4-story ring without any gaps when its finished. The differences in height you see at the moment are merely due to the varying construction progress on the different segments and the gaps are there to allow access for vehicles to the centre during the construction progress.

Where you are right is that technically this ring is made up of separate segments that are statically largely independent.

 

[rdlink]

Sometimes, Practical and Pretty simply cannot be done.
You design the very best tool to be the perfect tool for the function and it looks the way it has to look to do that task.
iMacs are a poor design for a computer.
They run hot, do not allow for expansion in the future, they cannot be fitted with good performing parts due to heat etc.
A better design is I'm afraid a box. It's a tool to perform a function on a screen.
That's not to say an iMac does not look funky, cool, slim etc.
But I accept it's compromised as a device for the sake of style.

You operate under the same assumption that many people do: That everyone plans to use a building or a computer the same way that you do.

Just because you might want to crack open a computer and upgrade it, or work on it doesn't mean that most people do. In fact, most people don't. I work at a firm where I support over 1500 computers. We leased our last group of desktops for 4 years. In those 4 years we opened up exactlly zero of them to upgrade them. And very few to repair. In fact, most repairs were carried out under warranty, so we didn't open them at all. Bottom line: Those boxes were no more efficient than iMacs for our needs. In fact it could be argued that they were less efficient. Because the most expensive thing that most businesses pay for after employees is real estate, and those "efficient" boxes with plenty of unusable space inside of them, and their separate monitors take up more expensive real estate than an iMac does.

Regarding the building, Apple may have done the same thing with its design that they do with the design of their products: Fix what people like you deem as hardware inefficiencies with software and design efficiencies. Designing systems and processes that allow people to stay in or near their daily workspace for most of their day would effect that design.

Me thinks your thinking is decidedly two dimensional.