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Norman Foster to Design Apple's New Cupertino Campus?
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I'm not sure he counts as British anymore. He spends most of his time in Switzerland avoiding taxes like so many other stupidly rich people that have done well out of Britain and don't give back.
We gave him a Sir and a Barony too yet still he doesn't want to pay taxes in the country his company is based in if not headquartered in.
Foster + Partners are, pretty much, the world's best architects. This is fantastic news for Apple.
People are entitled to an opinion, of course. On this, your own is - quite simply - hideously wrong.
It was voted the best new building in the world by the top architects across the globe after it was built. It's universally loved by Londoners and is truly unique in both form and function.
All skyscrapers are phallic. It takes a rather myopic critic to point out that particular similarity.
This one just happens to be beautiful.
People are entitled to an opinion, of course. On this, your own is - quite simply - hideously wrong.
It was voted the best new building in the world by the top architects across the globe after it was built. It's universally loved by Londoners and is truly unique in both form and function.
All skyscrapers are phallic. It takes a rather myopic critic to point out that particular similarity.
This one just happens to be beautiful.
The real cost of construction typically outweighs any actual benefit, i.e the carbon output is not offset by the resulting 'green' product.
I certainly have my faults, but I didn't say I did nothing for the environment - that was your false assumption.
This.
I second that, a fugly building, would never design him anything, but Steve loves this glass syle I think.
The ultimate palace, funded by the Apple Tax we've paid to own Apple products.
I can imagine the uproar if this was Microsoft instead of Apple.
No worries, Gates is busy giving back, while Steve builds a monument to further bolster his ego.
All hail the Supreme Leader...
Hey I hate to break this to you but the goal is not to see how much cash you can give away, but to see how much you can make. It's a new concept called capitalism. Heard of it??
I guess it's now too gauche to be a successful business in this country
That's an often repeated though blatantly false statement that has been used against everything from hybrids to CFLs.
In reality, buildings sit in place for decades and decades while they are used daily.
A building that is built with sustainability in mind takes all of those things into consideration and over a life span of decades and decades saves an incredible amount of energy.
Same thing with a Prius, the CO2 savings over the lifetime of the vehicle are more than sufficient to cover the production process.
It's common sense really, all you have to do is examine some of the claims made against sustainability and think 'would they be doing this if it were so blatantly pointless?'
In other instances, comparing the energy used in the 18 month construction period to 50 or 60 years of continual use and deducing that the construction process uses more than 50 to 60 years worth of energy is downright moronic.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)
[sarcasm] Right we should stop building anything new and just use whatever we have now. [/sarcasm]
Santabean2000 said:
[sarcasm] Right we should stop building anything new and just use whatever we have now. [/sarcasm]
What, then, are you recommending?
Apple needs to expand - how do you think it should be done? You sound like an ideas man...
Ray
Apple needs to expand - how do you think it should be done? You sound like an ideas man...
Ray
Hmmm... underground roads in California. Good thing they don't have earthquakes out there.
Don't worry, the San Andreas Fault is 9 km from 1 Infinite Loop, the Haward Fault is 17 km, and the Calaveras Fault is 25 km away.
What could go wrong?
"Form over function" triumphs agains
Silicon Valley needs more companies willing to spend billions on temples - but not willing to support their products that don't hit the mainstream?
(Ask any Xserve or Final Cut Server user if they'd rather be able to buy an Apple Server, or if they'd rather that Apple spent billions on a flashy set of buildings.)
Silicon Valley needs more companies willing to spend billions on temples - but not willing to support their products that don't hit the mainstream?
(Ask any Xserve or Final Cut Server user if they'd rather be able to buy an Apple Server, or if they'd rather that Apple spent billions on a flashy set of buildings.)
Well yes we want them to keep working on those things.
To do that they need more staff, and those staff need to be able to both work in their own groups and to cross pollinate ideas.
Plus Apple people are know for working long hours (work hard, party harder) so you want people to have good space with lots of natural light and good indoor air quality. You want people close together so they bump in to each other a have casual interaction and information sharing.
All these things need well designed space.
Which Apple is clearly short of.
Just like you can't just go out and hire a 100 random programmers and fix the problem, you can't just go out and buy random building stock and fix the problem either.
p.s Foster+Partners work became notable in architecture because of their willingness to let the quality of the indoor space drive the exterior not the other way around.
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My understanding could be wrong, but I believe this is exactly what Apple does not want. Apple is not exactly known for sharing information, even among employees.
True, buildings with sustainable energy use in mind are better, simply due to their potential lifetime's use. Cars don't even come close.
Problem is that the true environmental cost is quite simply, seriously underestimated. Especially when the broader definition of environment is taken into account, i.e. not just carbon.
If you look at the vertical line of production you'll find mining, deforestation, habitat loss, pollution etc etc, as well as carbon, which all adds up to a massive toll on the environment EVERY time pretty much anything new is made. Especially buildings on the scale that Apple is planning.
Not stop building anything new, but rather stop buying stuff just because it's new. How much of Apple's proposed building will be paid for by rampant consumerism?
Let's assume they do. Go for it, build. Just don't pretend they're trying to help the environment. Problem is 'Green' is the current, essential marketing tool.
Apple might try and build a more sustainable facility, (if sustainable is defined purely by energy consumption at the end), but in reality this is for just two, maybe 3 reasons:
1. to look good
2. it helps them feel better about themselves, (whether it actually should, or not).
3. possibly save some money
Tell me - do you think that Apple would conduct an environmental impact study on their project before they start? How much care would they demonstrate in selecting their materials for construction? How much care would they demonstrate in the process of construction?
Don't get me wrong, I like Apple and their products. I just get tired of hearing the Green marketing spin day in day out, and not just from them.
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Green cars and buildings
If you need a new car to get around or new buildings to house your growing workforce in, then it certainly makes a difference to buy or build something that has been designed in a way that places less of a burden on the environment than an alternative that doesn't.
I guess this sort of comment is based on the implicit assumption that it would be better if people didn't build any new buildings or buy any new cars at all. Not a very plausible assumption, I'm afraid. I can't imagine that there are any existing buildings that provide what Apple needs to continue to operate its business efficiently, for example. And the vast majority of people need to get a new car once and a while so that they can get to work, manage their households and enjoy some leisure time.
If you need a new car to get around or new buildings to house your growing workforce in, then it certainly makes a difference to buy or build something that has been designed in a way that places less of a burden on the environment than an alternative that doesn't.
I guess this sort of comment is based on the implicit assumption that it would be better if people didn't build any new buildings or buy any new cars at all. Not a very plausible assumption, I'm afraid. I can't imagine that there are any existing buildings that provide what Apple needs to continue to operate its business efficiently, for example. And the vast majority of people need to get a new car once and a while so that they can get to work, manage their households and enjoy some leisure time.
Maybe it'll be alomg the lines of the Virgin Spaceport?
http://www.virgingalactic.com/overview/spaceport/
http://www.virgingalactic.com/overview/spaceport/
cool his firm is currently doing a building (skyscraper) in my town (calgary) (we also have a calatrava bridge under construction). Should be intersting to see if they step out of the prototypical foster and partners styling....
Yes there are famous cases of intense secrecy around a particular projects like the iPhone. Is that really the status quo?
I mean all the low level code stuff seems to be about getting bang for buck. Code reuse, and all those nifty design patterns they tend to hammer. We've also heard about the monday meeting with project updates and small team that move between related projects.
I would have thought for the average campus employee there was a high level of information sharing going on. Maybe they'll have keep the two campus will different zones so staff are only running in to the people they should be sharing with.
...Should have gone with Ando
Oh yeah....
Maybe they can get Ando to do the Secret Labs within the Foster campus.
Although you'd want to re-forest part of the site for the Labs to be placed in.
Correct. If you need...
Most 'needs', are quite simply not. Fact: The USA is the most resource hungry, pompous, self-gratifying country on earth. Most 'needs' there are extensions to a lifestyle that is simply unreachable to most other nations and COMPLETELY UNSUSTAINABLE in the long term. Actually, the ONLY reason it's still achievable now is through the systematic rape of the world's resources and exploitation of it's people.
It's important to strip away the facts from the spin when making your purchase decisions. Not easy. And I'm not claiming to always get it right, but I make a point of questioning multinationals' 'research' and deceitful advertising by looking for, and listening to, the small man.
Out.
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A skyscraper is a bad reference for the kind of building that Apple would build her. For a better reference, see Stanford's Clark Center:
Stunning courtyard space and very innovative design for collaborative research.