Apple’s New Hi-Tech Headquarters
Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, made a quick visit to the Cupertino, California city council meeting on Tuesday to unveil Apple’s plans for a new clean energy spaceship-shaped campus to be built in that city. In typical grandiose style, Jobs unveiled plans for a four-story spaceshiplike sphere of glass and steel by a renowned architecture firm, saying it gives Apple a shot at building the best office building in the world.
This new building will be built on approximately 150 acres which Apple has acquired so that their headquarters can remain in Cupertino, a suburb of San Francisco. The current building holds roughly 2,600 employees while other employees are scattered about in buildings throughout the city. Apple’s New Hi-Tech Headquarters will be constructed to hold 12,000 employees under one roof with some of the world’s largest panes of glass sloping around every bend. The spherical shape of the building allows for more windows than a square shaped building and therefore more ambient light, so those 12,000 employees won’t constantly be clicking on their light switches.
According to the city of Cupertino, Jobs has hired London-based Norman Foster and Partners, a company known for its iconic, modernist masterpieces, including the so-called “pickle” building in London as well as two buildings on the Stanford University campus: the James H. Clark Center and the Center for Clinical Science Research. The firm would transform 150 acres, including buildings Apple bought from Hewlett-Packard, across Interstate 280 from the current Apple headquarters. While the building and underground parking would take up 20 percent of the property, apricot orchards and parklike landscaping would cover the rest.
The new campus will have its own natural-gas-fired energy center as its main power source. It will also have an auditorium for major presentations, a research and development facility and cafe.
Council members appeared impressed and delighted with the announcement. Now that we have seen your plans, the word spectacular would be an understatement, said Councilman Orrin Mahoney. Everybody is going to appreciate what clearly is going to be the most elegant headquarters at least in the U.S that I have seen. We definitely appreciate the work that has gone into it and looking forward to working with you to move it through the process.
Jobs told the city Apple hopes to break ground next year and move in 2015. He said the Infinite Loop campus will continue to house about 2,600 Apple employees. [Mercury News]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuz5OmOh_M[/youtube]
