Apple today announced that Apple Park, the company’s new 175-acre campus, will be ready for employees to begin occupying in April. The process of moving more than 12,000 people will take over six months, and construction of the buildings and parklands is scheduled to continue through the summer.
Envisioned by Steve Jobs as a center for creativity and collaboration, Apple Park is transforming miles of asphalt sprawl into a haven of green space in the heart of the Santa Clara Valley. The campus’ ring-shaped, 2.8 million-square-foot main building is clad entirely in the world’s largest panels of curved glass.
Steve would have turned 62 this Friday, February 24. To honor his memory and his enduring influence on Apple and the world, the theater at Apple Park will be named the Steve Jobs Theater. Opening later this year, the entrance to the 1,000-seat auditorium is a 20-foot-tall glass cylinder, 165 feet in diameter, supporting a metallic carbon-fiber roof. The Steve Jobs Theater is situated atop a hill — one of the highest points within Apple Park — overlooking meadows and the main building.
“Steve’s vision for Apple stretched far beyond his time with us. He intended Apple Park to be the home of innovation for generations to come,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “The workspaces and parklands are designed to inspire our team as well as benefit the environment. We’ve achieved one of the most energy-efficient buildings in the world and the campus will run entirely on renewable energy.”
“Steve was exhilarated, and inspired, by the California landscape, by its light and its expansiveness. It was his favorite setting for thought. Apple Park captures his spirit uncannily well,” said Laurene Powell Jobs, in a statement. “He would have flourished, as the people of Apple surely will, on this luminously designed campus.”
“Steve invested so much of his energy creating and supporting vital, creative environments. We have approached the design, engineering and making of our new campus with the same enthusiasm and design principles that characterize our products,” said Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, in a statement. “Connecting extraordinarily advanced buildings with rolling parkland creates a wonderfully open environment for people to create, collaborate and work together. We have been extremely fortunate to be able to work closely, over many years, with the remarkable architectural practice Foster + Partners.”
Apple Park will also include a visitors center with an Apple Store and cafe open to the public, a 100,000-square-foot fitness center for Apple employees, secure research and development facilities and the Steve Jobs Theater. The parklands offer two miles of walking and running paths for employees, plus an orchard, meadow and pond within the ring’s interior grounds.
Designed in collaboration with Foster + Partners, Apple Park replaces 5 million-square-feet of asphalt and concrete with grassy fields and over 9,000 native and drought-resistant trees, and is powered by 100 percent renewable energy. With 17 megawatts of rooftop solar, Apple Park will run one of the largest on-site solar energy installations in the world. It is also the site of the world’s largest naturally ventilated building, projected to require no heating or air conditioning for nine months of the year.
Source: Apple Inc.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, once ensconced, Apple employees will flourish even one-tenth as much as Steve would have. Just that would be enough produce innovative magic once again!
Finally, THE BIG DISTRACTION, er… “Apple Park” is almost done!
So is Apple getting into the theme park business? I’d love to visit an Apple themed park! I wonder if they will have an “arcade” of Macs with emulated retro video games? (Yes, emulators exist for the Mac, look it up) Hope they open a smaller indoor park at the Mall of America.
It’s not an amusement park, it’s a business park where shit gets done. Actually read the article you stupid white boy.
I think CPW just got ‘itch slapped (and it was good).
Let us just hope that the “Curse of the Gleaming New HQ” doesn’t befall Apple. The story behind the curse is that whenever a company decides to construct a massive new HQ campus, it always happens just after its historic pinnacle of success, and it is always downhill from there.
There are still as many talented people at Apple today as there were eight years ago, while Jobs was still running things at full steam. The company may be missing its chief visionary, but talent is talent, and there is no reason why many more innovative, uncompromising designs can’t come out from Apple.
MDN is most likely correct; the whole process of construction of this HQ complex has been a massive distraction to a large percentage of high- and mid-level management, and once this distraction is over, focus can shift to the core stuff.
lol “core”
Yes let’s hope the organization and the way departments communicate will not be lost in such a large edifice. If anything it should improve the way Apple works and not act as an obstacle. Otherwise, what was the point?
PLOT TWIST… SPOILER ALERT
Apple Park LAUNCHES soon!… as in… see you later, time to move Apple to the far reaches of the universe. (And that kinda explains the lack of Mac Pro updates now doesn’t it?)
I’ve followed the monthly video drone update for now Apple Park. What I can’t see yet is how employees get from the parking garages to the spaceship. I know it is exercise oriented, but there are some days where it might be pouring rain, etc. and that is a long ways from parking to the desk.
Is there going to be a shuttle, like Disney? Also, what if you have time critical info that needs to get from section A of the spaceship to section N? Is there a circular tram on multi-levels? Love the campus, but very curious about how problems are solved.
Tunnel perhaps? Although I did not see one on the early physical plant layout.
Perhaps they installed Star Trek turbo lifts that can go sideways as well as up/down? 😉
I don’t know about the parking garage to building connection. Perhaps there is a covered walkway or a tunnel? But the time critical info? I suspect that they will use wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi. I would think that Apple would minimize the use of paper.
Maybe those glass elevators from Charlie and the Chocolate factory that include a button for ‘space station’?
Also, the radar is all on Campus 2, but many don’t even know about Campus 3’s construction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P9huhtmXGA
No, a mere building will neither inspire innovation nor promote collaboration; And even the most elevated place in a setting will be hated – thus countering Steve’s hopes – if the job is hated.
Did you seriously just put a FLASH embed on your site? Oh the horror, the horror!!!
This was four months before his death. Listening to his weakening voice makes me quite sad.
RIP, Mr. Jobs.
Incidentally, I hope they also name part of the building after Steve Wozniak. He deserves the recognition.
The Steve Jobs Theater. Opening Day Show: “1984” also known as “Onboarding”.