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Steve Jobs in the Apple Campus 2 video
On October 1, 2013, Apple made a presentation at the Cupertino, Calif., city hall as part of the effort to seek approval to begin construction on Apple Campus 2. Part of the presentation included the video you see below, which features Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs being quoted at several points. The video quality isn't that great, so it's obvious that this is a copy that may have been made on-site at the presentation. However, it's amazing to see Jobs, architect Norman Foster and others talking about the project. Construction is expected to begin this year, with occupancy coming sometime in 2015.
Daily Update for October 28, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
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.
Apple's Campus 2 presentation video posted online
The City of Cupertino has posted the Apple Campus 2 Presentation: City of Cupertino Study Session video from earlier this month. Apple's Senior Director of Real Estate & Facilities Dan Whisenhunt led the presentation on Apple Campus 2 project at the October 1, 2013 Joint Study Session of the Cupertino City Council and the Cupertino Planning Commission, according to the video's YouTube notes. A few interesting tidbits from the study session video include a short video presentation to the crowd which sees UK-based architect Norman Foster who designed Apple Campus 2 note how the "spaceship" shape of the campus wasn't there from the beginning and that its design "grew into that." Foster also revealed that in 2009, Steve Jobs called him personally to enlist him as the designer of Campus 2. According to Foster, once he arrived in Cupertino, Jobs said, "Don't think of me as your client. Think of me as one of your team."
Cupertino City Council unanimously approves Apple's new campus
Fret not, devotees: the mothership is coming home. Yes, in a vote that shocked no one, the Cupertino City Council unanimously approved Apple's Campus 2 -- otherwise known as the spaceship campus. The vote was held last night after the council opened up the floor to hear arguments for and against the building of Apple's new HQ. As MacRumors notes, this vote of approval isn't quite the last step to getting it built. There's always a chance that someone could petition the council to reconsider its decision, but that would need to be done within the next 10 days. If that doesn't happen, Apple can begin demolishing existing structures on the site. Then on November 19, there will be one final public reading of the agreement between Apple and the City of Cupertino. If there are no last-minute, dramatic oppositions, Apple's full building permits will go into effect the next day.
Apple Campus 2 model unveiled by CFO Peter Oppenheimer
Photo credit: Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group The San Jose Mercury News today posted exclusive photos of a detailed model of Apple's new corporate headquarters campus. The model was unveiled by Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer and Director of Real Estate and Facilities Dan Whisenhunt, and provides an amazing look at what the campus will look like when completed in 2015. The model shows how the company plans to take a former Hewlett-Packard campus that is about 80 percent asphalt parking, and turn it into one that is about 80 percent open space and parkland. The 175-acre site features the iconic ring-shaped headquarters building, an above-ground parking structure covered by photovoltaic solar panels, a round on-site theater for presentations, a fitness center for employees and more parking underground. Not surprisingly for a company that prides itself on green initiatives, the main headquarters building is designed to be naturally ventilated, with radiant cooling that will eliminate the need for air conditioning about 70 percent of the year. Whisenhunt told the Mercury News that the building will not only use 30 percent less energy than typical Silicon Valley office buildings, but it will also use 100 percent renewable energy -- much of which is produced at the campus. While the images cannot be shown here, we recommend that readers visit the Mercury News site to view the slideshow. The campus is up for final approval on October 15 at a Cupertino city council meeting.
Daily Update for June 4, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Apple releases economic impact report for new headquarters
Apple's new headquarters building is still years away from completion in 2016, and as part of the approval process for the new facility, Apple has just released a report prepared by Keyser Marston Associates for the City of Cupertino, Calif., that details the "Economic and Fiscal Impacts Generated by Apple in Cupertino." Apple Campus 2 will include the "spaceship" office building that will house about 12,000 employees, plus other buildings (research and development labs, a central plant, auditorium and fitness center) that add another 1,000 people to the mix. The report doesn't include the impact of 1,200 more employees who will eventually be added as part of a Phase 2 building program. Apple's existing Infinite Loop campus will remain in place, so the report looks at the total impact as both locations are filled with employees. It's expected that by 2016, the company will directly employ 23,400 people in Cupertino -- impressive growth considering the company currently has about 16,000 people at Infinite Loop and leased space in the city. Some of the other projections provided in the report detail the tax revenue that the addition of the new facility will generate. Apple currently provides about US$24.8 million in property tax revenue to local agencies; that number is expected to more than double to $56.5 million with the completion of Apple Campus 2. Other benefits include one-time revenues to the City of Cupertino for construction taxes and fees of about $38.1 million and $13.9 million of sales and use tax revenue from the purchase of construction materials. The full report is included below for your reading pleasure. [via The Next Web] Apple Economic Impact Report
Daily Update for April 25, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Apple's planned 'spaceship' campus reportedly $2 billion over budget
In June of 2011, Steve Jobs stood before the Cupertino City Council and announced Apple's desire to build a massive new campus on 98 acres of land it had previously acquired from Hewlett Packard. And by massive, I mean that it will have a slightly larger footprint than the Pentagon. Jobs explained that Apple was undergoing a period of tremendous growth and that it was renting buildings adjacent to its 1 Infinite Loop campus in order to house its ever-growing number of employees. "We've rented every scrap of building we could find in Cupertino," Jobs previously noted. Apple's proposed new campus will be able to accommodate 12,000 employees, will feature an auditorium large enough to host WWDC-scale presentations and will sport a cafeteria capable of seating 3,000. As you can tell from the architectural renderings pictured above, the design of the new campus will be anchored by a large circular building. "It's a little like a spaceship landed," Jobs explained to the council. "It's got this gorgeous courtyard in the middle, but it's got a lot more." In typical Apple style, Jobs boasted that the planned structure would be comprised of curved glass. "There's not a single straight piece of glass in this building," Jobs said at the time. "We've used our experience in building retail buildings all over the world. We know how to make the biggest pieces of glass 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." While Jobs initially hoped that the campus would be completed by 2015, things haven't exactly gone as planned. Apple hasn't even broken ground yet and the new campus likely won't be finished until 2016 at the earliest. What's more, BusinessWeek is reporting that Apple's initial US$3 billion budget for the project has shot up to $5 billion. Since 2011, the budget for Apple's Campus 2 has ballooned from less than $3 billion to nearly $5 billion, according to five people close to the project who were not authorized to speak on the record. If their consensus estimate is accurate, Apple's expansion would eclipse the $3.9 billion being spent on the new World Trade Center complex in New York, and the new office space would run more than $1,500 per square foot -- three times the cost of many top-of-the-line downtown corporate towers. The report relays that one of the reasons for the delay is that Apple is still working with its lead architectural firm -- Foster + Partners -- to lower the budget by as much as $1 billion. Part of the cost overrun is due to Jobs' extremely particular taste with respect to materials. As with Apple's products, Jobs wanted no seam, gap or paintbrush stroke showing; every wall, floor and even ceiling is to be polished to a supernatural smoothness. All of the interior wood was to be harvested from a specific species of maple, and only the finer-quality "heartwood" at the center of the trees would be used, says one person briefed on the plan last year. As it stands now, Apple will reportedly begin removing the 26 buildings which currently occupy the eventual landing spot for the "spaceship" this June. As a point of interest, Apple is doing all it can to make its new campus as green as possible. To that end, campus parking will be underground as to maintain the above-ground foliage while the roof will be comprised of 700,000 square feet of solar panels.
Apple's Campus 2 will up the secrecy factor with an underground auditorium
You know how Tim Cook said Apple will be "doubling down on secrecy" for unannounced products? Well, the company's hush-hush mentality seems to be informing the design for its upcoming Campus 2. According to plans and technical drawings on Cupertino.org, Apple could be moving its press events underground -- into a mammoth subterranean auditorium that will no doubt also serve as Cook's secret lair / bunker for tough times in the ongoing patent wars. You know what they say -- out of sight, out of mind... and so beyond passé ground-level amphitheaters. Click the source link below for more images.
Apple details neighbors on Campus 2 plans, extends rare request for feedback
Cupertino residents may have received an unsolicited package from their most prominent neighbor this week. No, it's not a new iPad, or an early look at the iPhone 5 -- instead, people close to Apple (from a physical perspective) opened the glossy mailing to reveal a detailed look at Apple Campus 2, which will consist of 176 acres currently occupied by "aging buildings" and trees. As we already know, the campus will feature one main circular four-story building with 2.8 million square feet of office and common space, along with an additional 300,000 square feet set aside for dedicated (secure) research buildings. There will be a restaurant, fitness center and other facilities aimed to "reduce automobile trips" as part of the company's plan to protect the environment. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer appeals to neighbors in a single-page letter, offering additional information upon receipt of a pre-stamped response card, which also prompts neighbors to add their name to a list of supporters, attend a public meeting or write a letter to show their support for the new Apple complex. You'll find Oppenheimer's letter in full after the break, along with additional photos at the source link.
Daily Update for December 7, 2011
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Visualized: the Apple mothership
We've already caught a glimpse of Apple's proposed science fiction museum new campus in Cupertino, but screen grabs just don't do this behemoth justice. A recently released set of renderings of Apple Campus 2, as it's known to the city of Cupertino, however, give it that proper otherworldly glow. According to the accompanying proposal, the building will take up a measly 2.8 million square feet, contain a 1,000-seat auditorium and research facilities totaling 300,000 square feet. Really? Is that all? If architectural renderings are your thing, hit the source link for some building-plan booty. %Gallery-130561%
