Steve Jobs would have turned 62 this coming Friday, 26 February. Today Apple officially announced Apple Park, the company’s glorious new cutting-edge campus (referred to as Campus 2).
Employees Move In April
Apple employees will begin moving into the new facility this coming April, while the entire process of moving 12,000 employees from both Campus 1 and other off-campus sites will take more than six months.
Additionally, construction is not entirely done, and both buildings and parklands are scheduled to be under final construction and installation through the summer of this year.
Key Takeaways
Apple’s new campus is nearly done and employees start moving in April of this year. Architecture firm Foster + Partners designed the entire facilities, not for but in collaboration with, Apple. Stunning innovations abound across nearly every level but its glass facades are world-breaking constructs that were not engineered or manufactured here in America. Both Seele and Sedak—both German firms and manufacturers—were employed to help create Apple’s complex glass ambitions.
“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 Santa Clara Valley,” notes Apple in its official press release today.
01 – Apple employees will no doubt enjoy working at such a stunning campus and set of facilities as Apple Park, in Cupertino. The underground theater for 1000 is named the Steve Jobs Theater.
“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. “He would have flourished, as the people of Apple surely will, on this luminously designed campus.”
Apple Park Details
The center of attention at Apple Park is its ring-shaped main building totaling 2.8 million-square-feet of space. The main campus office building is clad entirely in curved panels of glass—the largest in the world.
In fact, the curved glass panels on the new Apple headquarters building are so large and difficult to make that Apple found just one acceptable manufacturer in the world who could manufacture them to meet the goals of the project—Sedak of Germany. Tim Cook visited Sedak’s facilities back in 2015 to inspect their production.
02 – Apple CEO Tim Cooks visiting Sedak of Germany, the source of Apple Park’s extraordinary glass facades. The German engineering firm Seele was also involved as facade consultants to Foster + Partners.
More than 3,000 curved sheets of glass wrap the inner and out facades of the new building. The largest of these panels is 14.3m x 3.2m. Though Foster + Partners were the design architects critical engineering expertise related to the complex facade was handled by Seele of Germany, a specialist engineering company with offices worldwide. Seele and Sedak have been involved in other Apple buildings prior to Apple Park.
While the main building’s main facade is truly impressive it is the underground theater (now named the Steve Jobs Theater)—that resembles a delicate flying saucer suspended on nothing but structural glass at its entrance on a hill—that may have even more architectural fans when all is said and done.
A Tribute To Steve
“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. “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.”
More details and photos of Apple Park are available here at Apple.
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