“With Apple’s characteristic secrecy, the company hasn’t officially released the design, or announced that the architect [for its proposed new campus] is Foster + Partners, the London-based firm known for its super-sleek, elegant, exquisitely detailed buildings,” Paul Goldberger writes for The New Yorker. But images of Apple’s future home, to be built on a campus that it has taken over from Hewlett-Packard, are all over the place, because plans must be presented to the local authorities in Cupertino, who understandably are falling all over themselves with delight.”
“Foster has proposed a gargantuan glass-and-metal ring, four stories high, with a hole in the middle a third of a mile wide. The building, which will house upwards of twelve thousand employees, will have a circumference of a mile, and will be so huge that you won’t really be able to perceive its shape, except from the air,” Goldberger writes. “Like everything Foster does, it will be sleek and impeccably detailed, but who wants to work in a gigantic donut? Steve Jobs, speaking to the Cupertino City Council, likened the building to a spaceship. But buildings aren’t spaceships, any more than they are iPhones.”
“So why is Foster’s design troubling, maybe even a bit scary? The genius of the iPhone, MacBook, iPad, and other Apple products is that they are tools that function well and happen to be breathtakingly beautiful. A building is also a tool, but of a very different sort. In architecture, scale—the size of various parts of a building in proportion to one another and to the size of human beings—counts for a lot. With this building, there seems to be very little sense of any connection to human size,” Goldberger writes. “Flexibility is a hallmark of the iPad, and it counts in architecture, too, but how much flexibility is there in a vast office governed entirely by geometry? For all of Foster’s sleekness, this Apple building seems more like a twenty-first-century version of the Pentagon.”
Goldberger writes, “It’s said that Steve Jobs considers this building to be a key part of his legacy, which would be unfortunate, because it would mean that his last contribution to his company might well be his least meaningful.”
More in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This much is sure: It’s one infinite loop.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple’s infinite loop: Mothership campus impressive but enigmatic – September 14, 2011
Architecture critic: Apple’s new mothership campus will be a retrograde cocoon – September 12, 2011
Cupertino Mayor Wong: Apple’s mothership campus ‘definitely not a done deal’ – September 9, 2011
Apple’s mothership campus: What’s the message? – August 22, 2011
City of Cupertino posts further details on Apple mothership campus – August 13, 2011
Apple’s new ‘Mothership’ campus: Full details and gallery – June 16, 2011
Steve Jobs wanted to build mothership campus nearly three decades ago – June 14, 2011
Cupertino mayor: ‘There is no chance we are saying no’ to Apple Mothership (with video) – June 9, 2011
Steve Jobs presents giant 12,000 employee ‘spaceship’ campus to Cupertino City Council (with video) – June 8, 2011
Kinda looks like Flynn’s identity disc.
It’s donut shaped so that Jobs can be laid to rest years from now in the center courtyard in a shrine…
All things considered, I am surprised by (pretty much all) the commentary on how much difficulty (or not) people in the building will have getting from one place to another inside it.
Isn’t it a bit presumptuous to think that people working there will be walking all over?
They will be networked. Outside of going to/leaving their particular work space when they arrive at/leave work, go to lunch, etc., just how much need will there be for significant numbers of workers to move about the building?
Very little, IMO.
You’d be surprised that the savings in travel time can be achieved more effectively through a centralized circular layout. With conventional rectangular layout, it would take much more time to travel between multiple buildings.
“So why is Foster’s design troubling, maybe even a bit scary?” The author has not given a single reasoned argument to support his sensational flourish. He is using gobbledygook as his language to confuse.
Ask people who work at the Pentagon — they love it. It’s a great place to work. It’s good to have “everyone” under one roof.
With the Apple campus you’ll never be more than 1/3 of a mile (5 minutes?) from a meeting. Often you’d be much closer.
Ellsworth M. Toohey has spoken.
…need I post about the relationship between opinions and @$$holes?
Critics used to say that Apple is mad to have retail stores, the iPad is worthless, the iPhone will be a flop; but all these so-called experts were proven wrong many times over. Don’t listen to them. They are empty vessels with a lot of noise jockeying for attention.
No matter what was proposed people of this type will always criticise, its the only way they can get noticed so objectivity goes out the window, curved or otherwise. Great buildings equally will always attract criticism, indeed if a building doesn’t its usually because it is simply overlooked or drearily brand. Interestingly enough I have no idea what sort of buildings Microsoft inhabits which says everything about the company and architectural critics disinterest in them.
Seems to me that if they ever wanted to expand they could always build in the center of it, whether it be connecting spokes, or separate buildings. Just a thought.
I used to work in the pentagon and I can tell you that it is not difficult to navigate at all. Because of the center courtyard, you just walk through to the opposite end if you need to be there—navigate up and down quickly by stairs or elevators We used all manner of transportation devices, from electric trucks to bikes to, you know, our feet.
It’s a very human scaled operation.
Actually it’s a cover for the giant particle accelerator which will fit in the basement……
Think about it. No arguments over who gets the higher floors with the view. No one gets the corner office, and hierarchy is no more. It is brilliant in its simplicity. Multi level square buildings, as efficient as they may be, create an atmosphere of entitlement and segregation. This building is the great equalizer! I manage 2,000 buildings across Asia for a major bank, and trust me, this endless loop of a campus completely changes the discussion around entitlement, grade and all those other issues that create barriers (physical and psychological) to high performance! This legacy will indeed stand the test of time! Brilliant, Steve, truly brilliant!
The oft-overlooked fact that I find most compelling is how the existing use of the lot is 47 covered acres (existing buildings and parking lots) vs 3 landscaped acres, whereas Apple proposes to invert that to 3 acres of buildings vs 47 landscaped acres.
Al Gore must have made his influence heard.
At least it won’t be a death trap in case of a fire. It won’t sway in the wind and give people motion sickness. People won’t be stuck in clouds or smog all day. They won’t need express elevators. That means, no staring at your own feet while going places. The farthest one can be away from one’s destination will be a half mile. To have your lunch in a park, you just go down four flights of stairs max.
Great concept and user friendly. Typical Apple.