New Model Offers Detailed Look at Apple's Upcoming 'Spaceship' Campus [Updated]

[teknikal90]

Any large building could do that.

The precision lighting, seamless gaps, curved glass, extra smooth concrete, and other obsessive details have already led to a multi-billion dollar cost overrun and will guarantee excessively expensive maintenance forever.

As a shareholder, I hope this building isn't Apple jumping over a shark made of hubris.

Cost cutting can go on forever though.
are you then going to scrutinize apple for say, using leather chairs as opposed to faux leather ones? mechanical pencils as opposed to $0.2 wooden ones?

How far is too far? I'd argue that as one of the most valuable companies in the world, a single expensive building isnt going to destroy them.

You can look at other companies too - did google really need to spend money on making underwater sonar maps? or did they really need to make custom google bikes, android statues and google toys around the building to get profitable work done?

Or does PWC need to make a large glass skyscraper downtown to make its office? why cant it be plain-jane and simple?

 

[TallManNY]

Clearly it is a giant home button with finger-print sensor. But who's thumb is coming to activate it?

 

[Bibbler]

Why does everything have to benefit shareholders?

Because they happen to own the company....

 

[Xavier]

Does anyone else think the inner circle of the mothership should be a hedge maze?

 

[ptb42]

Thus building looks rather like GCHQ - the British Internet spying headquarters.

That one is known locally as "The Doughnut".

 

[RolyPolyBird]

Looks like an airport-sized parking garage. I can just see the traffic jams on the approach roads during morning commute hours.

One of my commute routes goes right by that old HP site. I'll have to find an alternative if I want to avoid even more traffic.

I doubt it, the project include detailed plans for new street planning, access and cycleways.

 

[iMerik]

I simply love this. It's something to be proud of and to appreciate working at.

 

[Geckotek]

What is this? A center for ants?!?

If I didn't see this on the first page, I was going to be disappointed in MR.

 

[ActionableMango]

Cost cutting can go on forever though.
are you then going to scrutinize apple for say, using leather chairs as opposed to faux leather ones? mechanical pencils as opposed to $0.2 wooden ones?

How far is too far? I'd argue that as one of the most valuable companies in the world, a single expensive building isnt going to destroy them.

You can look at other companies too - did google really need to spend money on making underwater sonar maps? or did they really need to make custom google bikes, android statues and google toys around the building to get profitable work done?

Or does PWC need to make a large glass skyscraper downtown to make its office? why cant it be plain-jane and simple?

I didn't say any of those things. It's easy to set up straw man arguments and knock them down, isn't it?

I'd advocate for typical high-end building standards, which is a very different thing than cost cutting that goes on forever.

 

[doelcm82]

This looks fake to me.

I think they just took pictures of the finished building, transmitted them back in time using a tachyon beam, and then manipulated the photos with tilt-shift effects and other photoshop trickery to make it look like a model.

 

[deconstruct60]

The multi-level parking structures at the bottom look like they take up more far space than the building.

cars take up more space than the passengers. . Most of these are likely going to be single passenger cars which is an even higher ratio.

They also probably needed to allocate some space to fill up the auditorium for the Apple "dog and pony" shows where they will bring in folks from off campus. Unless scheduled those for outside work hours that will bubble the number of folks who need places and likely would be frowned on if parking leaks out into the surrounding neighborhood. A couple of things there looks like have been tweaked to flow more traffic onto Apple's campus more quickly.

It must be expensive to make them earthquake-proof as well (?).

As someone pointed out these look like Airport parking garages... I think someone in CA has build a couple of those before. Additionally, it looks like these are bigger than the initial design. They may have also swapped some underground space for above ground space to save costs. Seismic wise having a building or arboretum above the underground parking probably is not cheaper than just adding another above ground structure.

[ IIRC the original design had some gas generators which looks like swapped for solar. Having more "roof" space isn't going to hurt the solar output capacity either. ]

The overpasses between the garages... those look kind of tricky seismic wise though.

 

[AT06]

That one is known locally as "The Doughnut".

As the building Apple is proposing is less 'fat' than GCHQ, I shall take the honour of nicknaming it "The Onion Ring"

 

[thelookingglass]

Any large building could do that.

The precision lighting, seamless gaps, curved glass, extra smooth concrete, and other obsessive details have already led to a multi-billion dollar cost overrun and will guarantee excessively expensive maintenance forever.

As a shareholder, I hope this building isn't Apple jumping over a shark made of hubris.

I agree. It's complete overkill.

I also don't understand the point of a large, circular building. Looks cool, but it's so impractical.

 

[deconstruct60]

I doubt it, the project include detailed plans for new street planning, access and cycleways.

Apple isn't going to change 280 or the off ramps. There wasn't 10K folks going to this campus now.

Looks like they made some changes to minimize the impact more than the initial designs did, but zero impact... not hardly. Likely to be as 'jacked up' as Shoreline/85/101nexus is in Mountain View is for the Google/Microsoft campus during peak rush hour.

 

[iMikeT]

If this thing is built to scale, it's going to be a huge campus!

More importantly, will it fly?

 

[MacVista]

hm...

What is Apple going to do with all that empty office space 5 years from now??

 

[FirstNTenderbit]

Cost cutting can go on forever though.
are you then going to scrutinize apple for say, using leather chairs as opposed to faux leather ones? mechanical pencils as opposed to $0.2 wooden ones?

How far is too far? I'd argue that as one of the most valuable companies in the world, a single expensive building isnt going to destroy them.

You can look at other companies too - did google really need to spend money on making underwater sonar maps? or did they really need to make custom google bikes, android statues and google toys around the building to get profitable work done?

Or does PWC need to make a large glass skyscraper downtown to make its office? why cant it be plain-jane and simple?

I didn't say any of those things. It's easy to set up straw man arguments and knock them down, isn't it?

I'd advocate for typical high-end building standards, which is a very different thing than cost cutting that goes on forever.

/ActionableMango sees strawman

/Grabs lighter, sets fire

/Opens bag, takes out marsmellows

/Makes smores

Profit

 

[kdarling]

Clearly it is a giant home button with finger-print sensor. But who's thumb is coming to activate it?

Does anyone else think the inner circle of the mothership should be a hedge maze?

I think TallManNY has already solved what should go in the middle



Seriously, I can't believe they didn't put a Home button app-icon shaped reflecting pool in there!

 

[ShiroiShimaTora]

It looks more like a disk pack from a minicomputer or one of the apartment buildings from The Jetsons than a spaceship.

 

[saving107]

What is Apple going to do with all that empty office space 5 years from now??

They are planning to keep using the current main campus, surrounding offices are currently being rented (Apple does not own them), when the lease is up the building owners will just lease them to other companies.

 

[teknikal90]

I didn't say any of those things. It's easy to set up straw man arguments and knock them down, isn't it?

I'd advocate for typical high-end building standards, which is a very different thing than cost cutting that goes on forever.

chill im not going on the offensive.
i used those extreme examples as a way to get my point across.

Now, you'd advocate for typical High-end building standard. Well, that also goes on forever. What does that mean?? What does 'high end' mean? Environmentally friendly 'high-end' may mean carbon neutral status. Or it may mean large fauna on the property. It may also mean well-designed. Well Apple's campus achieves all of those. At what point do you think is it too much? Is it the curved glass that is too much? If they took that out and replaced it with straight glass would it then be okay? Or how about the concrete, if they changed the concrete to be 1 grade lower, would it be okay?

Is it too much to give Steve Jobs a new SL 500 Mercedes every 6 months? Isn't that detrimental to shareholder value? But Apple did.

My point is, often times (and I know that I'm guilty of this too) we think that things exist for a singular purpose. And more often than not, they're not. Apple is a public company. But its purpose is not JUST to create shareholder value.

Thinking otherwise turns our world far too robotic and far less human than it ought to be. I'm a financial planner by trade. Does that mean that I shouldn't spend money on music gear? That's not what I do after all....... Or a more exaggerated example, if I'm a pastor, does that mean I should never buy a nice suit/car?
Lots of critics on that one.

 

[lleyts]

I think I once read that as soon as a tech company builds a fancy new headquarters building for itself that its days of prosperity are numbered. I hope that's not true here.

Yes and no. Pixar did alright. I'm more worried about the senior staff and their huge windfalls (with stock bonus sales). Ive just bought a crazy nice home - does he worry about that or his work at AAPL? That's what was amazing about Jobs…he just loved what he did vs. family, home, etc. (at least til the end - bad for everyone except AAPL product lovers).

 

[teknikal90]

I think TallManNY has already solved what should go in the middle

View attachment 440376

Seriously, I can't believe they didn't put a Home button app-icon shaped reflecting pool in there!

Ha! or maybe they should make a giant bowl that looks like a fingerprint sensor in the middle now
to make it look like sapphire, it should always be running water. And people after work can jump from the top down to the middle of the bowl like a giant massive epic waterslide. the'red be a hole right in the middle thats like a waterfall where people will drop down into a pool beneath. then they can swim to the in-pool bar nearby.

*SICK*

 

[4Apples]

Funny how the Curpertino council is taking so long to vote and approve lol.. really!? This is probably the best thing that ever happened to that city.

 

[diddl14]

Well, whatever happens to Apple in the next decade, this thing is their to stay..