Apple Park

Image via Cupertino.org

As Apple’s Campus 2 site steadily progresses closer toward someday being complete, Architectural Record (via Mac Rumors) has shared a recent Q&A with architect Norman Foster, the designer responsible for the structure and appearance of the future campus. In the interview, Foster describes the evolution of the project and working with Steve Jobs on Apple’s Campus 2, which is currently in the midst of construction after being approved by the city of Cupertino just last fall…

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Apple’s new ‘spaceship’ headquarters has been a long time in the coming, with Steve Jobs presenting the plans to the Cupertino city council back in 2011, but work has finally begun. KCBS eye-in-the-sky reporter Ron Cervi took the above Instagram photo, showing that demolition work on the site is now underway.

While we heard last month that the demolition phase was starting, this is the first visible evidence we’ve seen. Apple also recently constructed a full-size mockup of one small section of the building in order to test construction methods and enable the company to see how the concrete elements would look in real life … 
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New renders released by the City of Cupertino from Apple’s planning documents provide the most detailed view yet of what life inside the company’s new spaceship headquarters will be like.

Illustrating everything from cafes to car-parks, the renders are intended to provide a feel for what the building will be like to work in, rather than just its appearance as a structure. They also include additional renders of the upper level of the 1,000-seat auditorium.

Full gallery below …

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Apple’s Campus 2 project will also house a 1,000-person auditorium off the main R&D ‘Mothership’, though this structure looks even more other-worldly. The Norman Foster mockups from Cupertino.org, and dug up by Apple Gazette last week, show an auditorium entrance surrounded by glass and with a metal roof.

The auditorium itself will be underground from the glass-surrounded auditorium. For its product launch events, Apple has typically either used its own Town Hall at its main Cupertino HQ or buildings in San Francisco such as Moscone West or the Yerba Buena Center.

It seems likely that with 1000 seats, Apple Campus 2 could replace most product unveilings at the main campus and in San Francisco. However, Apple will continue to need Moscone West for WWDC, a conference that brings in around 5000 people each year.

We’ve included the floor plan drawing from our original full gallery of the space from September of last year. You can see from the renderings and the floor plans that both the elevators and stairs that resemble the ones at the 5th Avenue Retail Store in New York.

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Cupertino City Council last night voted unanimously to approve Apple’s planning application for the circular campus building first presented to council members by Steve Jobs in 2011, in what was to turn out to be his last public appearance before his death. It was Steve Jobs who nicknamed the building the ‘spaceship.’

Although the approval is still subject to a final vote on 15th November, the San Jose Mercury News reports that this is merely a formality.

Now that the project has been approved, the council by regulation must meet one more time on Nov. 15 for a final and largely perfunctory vote. The spaceship, for all practical purposes, has now been approved for liftoff.

You can view a gallery of photos of a detailed model below the fold …

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIXme5sh4sU]

(full video below)

Yesterday, we saw Apple’s models for the new Campus 2 project. Today, Cupertino released this video of the council meeting where Apple presented. The Campus 2 video Apple produced looks like an Apple product video. I really like it, especially the Steve Jobs bits.

Apple also released an updated project plan including more solar roofing (below). 
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Apple today published a report on its website detailing the “Economic and Fiscal Impacts Generated by Apple in Cupertino – Current Facilities and Apple Campus 2.” 

Apple notes that the report, which details a number of topics from job creation to construction of its new spaceship campus, was put together by Keyser Marston Associates, Inc. (KMA) for the City of Cupertino under contract with Apple Inc.

With net annual sales in excess of $156 billion, 16,000 employees currently based in the Cupertino area, and annual purchases from local Silicon Valley-based businesses of $4.6 billion, Apple is a cornerstone of the Silicon Valley economy and of the fiscal resources of the City of Cupertino.

Much of the report focuses on the economic impacts and future contributions of Apple’s currently under construction Apple Campus 2. In the report, Apple details how its new campus will “add an estimated 7,400 new high-quality jobs,” increase revenues for the local economy, and enhance tax revenues for the city and surrounding areas. Apple says it will support 24,000 jobs in Cupertino alone when the campus is ready in 2016.

It also detailed investments being made in public improvements surrounding its new campus including infrastructure and utility improvements and its transportation program:
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Last May, after some residents voiced concern about Apple’s planned Spaceship Campus 2 project, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer sent out a brochure/mailer to local residents, hoping to alleviate concerns about the huge new office building and surrounding Campus 2.

Click to enlarge, via Macrumors

Apple last week updated its Campus 2 plans with the inclusion of walk and bike trails and other specifics on the land use. As Macrumors notes, Cupertino residents have begun receiving updated mailers with the new updated information and focused on the positive environmental impact the buildings will have.

At Apple, the environment is a top priority, and we’ve designed Apple Campus 2 with cutting-edge features to make it energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable. Several of these green technologies are highlighted in this update.

As at our existing campus on Infinite Loop, we are committed to 100% renewable energy to power Apple Campus 2. This will include onsite generation from photovoltaics and fuel cells. As part of this effort, approximately 8 megawatts of photovoltaics will be installed, creating one the largest installations of its kind on a corporate campus anywhere in the world.

Apple started in Cupertino, and we are excited to continue to grow here. As we build the new campus, we also plan to invest in new roadways and intersection improvements, add new sidewalks and better bike lanes, and plant new trees in newly created medians in the surrounding neighborhood.

Find Steve Jobs’ original Campus 2 submission to the Cupertino City Council video below:
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Apple has just revised its plans for its massive upcoming new headquarters, scheduled to be completed by 2016. The revised plans, known as Submittal 6, focus less on the structure of the building itself, instead highlighting the surrounding land and facilities, showing off new bike paths, larger parking areas, and photos of street renderings.

The parking areas have been increased in capacity from 9,000 to 9,240 in the main lot, and 1,500 to 1,740 in an additional location, the report states. Updated bike access plans include new features such as enhanced bike lanes called “buffered bike lanes,” as well as bike boxes and two-stage turn boxes (images below).

We already knew there would be delays for Apple’s 2.8-million square foot Campus 2 following reports in November. Apple originally planned to move around 12,000 employees into the currently under construction spaceship-like campus by 2015, but in November warned completion of construction would likely be delayed until mid-2016. Today we get some more insider info on the project in a report from Bloomberg Businessweek, claiming the project is now over budget and possibly delayed even further:

In a story titled “Apple’s Campus 2 shapes up as an investor relations nightmare,” citing sources close to the project, Bloomberg claimed Apple’s grandiose plans for the building have resulted in the budget nearly doubling 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.

Apple has yet to actually break ground on the site, but Bloomberg’s sources said Apple has plans to start demolition of 26 buildings that are currently on the land.  According to the report, the delays are due to extra time spent attempting to cut around $1 billion from the budget. Apple has also yet to complete deals with contractors:
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Reliable sources recently provided 9to5Mac with official blueprints of Apple Campus 2 that detail and illustrate the mammoth project currently in development. (These are just a few of the confidential images.)

The spaceship-like building, called “Campus 2,” is nearly a mile in circumference. Apple bought the land from HP and other neighbors in Cupertino, Calif., for around $300 million. The company’s late cofounder, Steve Jobs, oversaw the building’s design, while the project’s proposal was his last public appearance (video below).

Solar panels cover the main building’s entire roof, and the images above depict additional outdoor and indoor aspects of the new structure. The exclusive slides named Foster + Partners as one of the architecture firms working on the project, and they cited Arup for consulting engineering, OLIN for landscape architecture, and Davis Langdon for construction. Previous reports indicated that construction is supposed to start later this year.

In related news: Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer sent neighbors brochures recently to solicit feedback on the project.

A previous 9to5Mac gallery featured 100 other high-quality images, and one of the highlights was an auditorium that Apple plans to give presentations at when the facilities open in 2015.

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