Arriving in his trademark black turtleneck and jeans, Steve Jobs made a rare appearance at the Cupertino City Council yesterday to give an overview of Apple’s new headquarters, due to house up to 13,000 Apple employees in truly amazing style. Norman Foster is believed to be the lead architect on this project, with renderings showing a graceful curved circle building, one that sits on naturally landscaped ground.
Via MacRumors:
The facility will be 80% landscaping, with most of the parking underground, compared to 20% landscaping with all above ground parking currently. The current campus has 3,700 trees and Apple plans to increase that to more than 6,000 trees, including “some apricot orchards.”
Apple also plans to build its own energy generation facility using natural gas, with the electricity grid as a backup.
Steve explains:
It’s a pretty amazing building. It’s a little like a spaceship landed. It’s got this gorgeous courtyard in the middle… It’s a circle. It’s curved all the way around. If you build things, this is not the cheapest way to build something. There is not a straight piece of glass in this building. It’s all curved. We’ve used our experience making retail buildings all over the world now, and we know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use. And, we want to make the glass specifically for this building here. We can make it curve all the way around the building… It’s pretty cool.
The building will be a significant piece of architecture when complete. As a strong believer in bold and beautiful actions, Apple comes through with a design that helps to elevate technology and space while retaining a sense of connection to the land.