Apple's Campus 2 will feature a 1,000-seat, all-glass keynote auditorium
Apple Gazette has found out something pretty cool about Apple's Campus 2. In addition to being the future flying saucer-like headquarters of Apple we're all familiar with by now, the campus will actually feature a second, independent building on the grounds entirely dedicated to media and staff events. As Apple Gazette notes:
Apple Campus 2 comes with its own detached structure built specifically for media-filled keynote presentations of new products (though I imagine it will be used for plenty of staff events, too). This new theater will seat 1,000, and get this: the auditorium itself will be underground.
Visitors will reach the underground theater by entering a large, round lobby with a disc-shaped metal roof and circular walls made entirely of glass. As you can see from these artists' renderings, the resulting structure strongly resembles a slender flying saucer floating in a forest.
The lobby also boasts a pair of cylindrical glass elevators, like the one inside New York's 5th Avenue Apple Store. You can see one of them in the rendering at the top; it's on the left side next to a staircase.
The 1,000-seat capacity means that the auditorium will surely replace media events at both Apple's Town Hall meeting rooms and the Yerba Buena Center where product launches for iOS devices and Macs take place now. It will also give Apple the added advantage of more secrecy as people will not be able to get up close and photograph banners going up like they do now at the public Yerba Buena Center. But WWDC shouldn't move however, as 1,000 seats is nowhere near enough room to house everyone who attends.
