Archinect - News

Employees at Apple's new headquarters keep walking into its famed glass walls

2018-02-16T15:39:00-05:00

There’s been one hiccup since it opened last year: Apple employees keep smacking into the glass.

The Apple headquarters in Cupertino, CA, designed by Foster and Partners, was built with much glass—the building's exterior features the famed curved panels of safety glass while the interior is populated with work spaces, also made from glass. Well, apparently, the favored building material is starting to be a real pain as Apple employees keep bumping into the clear, spotless walls.

This is not the first time Apple's penchant for prioritizing aesthetics over functionality has posed a safety risk. This winter, their flagship store in Chicago, also designed by Foster, caused a snow-related safety hazard due to its thin, gutter-less, carbon fiber roof.

Apple Campus will open its doors to the public next week for iPhone 8 launch

2017-09-05T15:41:00-04:00

While the new Apple Campus still remains incomplete, Apple is moving forward with hosting the launch of their new iPhone 8 on site. The company sent out a media invite last Thursday with the tagline, "Let's meet at our place," confirming the location of the event. It will be the first time Apple has allowed large numbers of outsiders to visit the campus.

Main campus, still incomplete. YouTube/Duncan Sinfield

The reveal coincides with the 10th anniversary of the first iPhone, launched in 2007. Rumored features include a 3D camera that can unlock the device using facial recognition, no more home button, wireless charging, OLED display technology with greater power efficiency, improved dual-lens camera, and an almost $1,000 price tag.

Steve Jobs Theater. YouTube/Duncan Sinfield

The keynote speeches will be held at the Steve Jobs Theater, an 1,000 seat below ground auditorium that sits on top of the hill overlooking the main building. Visitors enter through a 20-foot-tall glass cylinder ...

Watch this 6-month time lapse drone video of the Apple Campus 2

2016-12-16T18:47:00-05:00

With all the drone construction videos of the new Apple Campus 2 (AC2) circulating on the interwebs, it's easy to lose track of what the progress has been on this Foster-designed Goliath of a project just in recent months.

Luckily this latest 4K video by Matthew Roberts on YouTube provides a handy 6-month time lapse of key campus sites, like 'the Spaceship,' auditorium/theater, primary access tunnel, research & development facility, the atrium, main parking garages, fitness center, maintenance facility, and the infamous 'mountain of dirt.'

Watch the video further below.

All images via Matthew Roberts' drone video on YouTube.

More recent AC2 news on Archinect:

Check out the latest 4K drone footage of the new Apple campus

2016-04-04T19:05:00-04:00

According to schedule, Apple employees will start moving into the new Apple campus –nicknamed AC2 – in about eight months. Tim Cook, the current CEO of the tech giant, called their last product launch "probably the last" to be held in the Cupertino town hall before the move.

For more on AC2, check out some past coverage:

First photos of enormous facade element for Apple's UFO

2014-07-08T19:53:00-04:00

Photos have emerged of what looks like the first facade piece for Apple's new mega HQ.

While civil engineering is now well underway at the site in Cupertino, California, the facade element was spotted thousands of miles away in the tiny Bavarian town of Gundelfingen. Josef Gartner GmbH, a Germany company specialized in steel-and-glass construction, had won the contract to deliver the facade elements for Apple's UFO, and it appears that the first prototype has now been put on display for presentation and testing.

Images show how the minimal curvature of the facade element foreshadows the colossal scale of the final, completed building with two of these elements eventually stacked on top of each other.

Completion of the Foster + Partners-designed headquarters is expected for 2016.

H/T and photos: ifun

Previously: "Confidential" architectural drawings of new Apple HQ leaked

Cupertino council clears huge Apple 'spaceship' campus for liftoff

2013-10-16T11:31:00-04:00

Apple's proposed new spaceship-shaped headquarters got a super-charged blast-off Tuesday night when the Cupertino City Council voted unanimously to approve the 2.8-million-square-foot behemoth beside Interstate 280, fulfilling a dream of co-founder Steve Jobs, hatching an iconic landmark for Silicon Valley, and promising more congestion in an already traffic-challenged region for decades to come.

Photos of new models of Apple's new headquarters are unveiled

2013-10-11T17:01:00-04:00

"The concept of the building,'' said Oppenheimer, "is collaboration and fluidity. It'll provide a very open-spaced system, so that at one point in the day you may be in offices on one side of the circle and find yourself on the other side later that day.''

Apple headquarters plan moves forward; Foster + Partners seek architects in Cupertino

2013-10-04T11:50:00-04:00

The Planning Commission in Cupertino, where Apple has its current headquarters, endorsed the project this week. It now goes to the City Council, which is expected to vote on it on Oct. 15.

As news spreads that Apple's new Cupertino headquarters moves closer to approval, Foster + Partners pushes forward with recruiting architects for the high-profile California project. See their current job openings here.

Apple Submits Revised Campus 2 Plans, Delays Tantau Development to Cut Costs

2013-04-25T18:59:00-04:00

In order to trim 300,000 square feet of construction costs from its budget, Apple has pushed the entire Tantau Development to Phase 2, which means it will be completed after the main campus is built. Apple's revised campus plan includes the addition of an expanded section detailing bicycle access improvements, which comes with an included visualization of what bike pathways and sidewalks might look like on the campus.

Download all the revised plans from Cupertino.org

Apple HQ building balloons to an estimated $5 billion

2013-04-08T18:55:00-04:00

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 vs. Amazon: Whose new headquarters is cooler?

2012-09-20T19:00:00-04:00

I’m no architecture critic, but the word “iconic” keeps popping to mind. In an industry full of soulless suburban campuses, give Jeff Bezos & Co. credit for building this in the city, at least.

The geeks speak on two new planned tech campuses. Which one do you prefer?

"Confidential" architectural drawings of new Apple HQ leaked

2012-09-07T16:52:00-04:00

A reliable source provided us with some official blueprints for the Apple Campus 2 yesterday, and these are just a few of the images that illustrate the mammoth building currently being planned in Cupertino, Calif. A single one of these slides leaked out today, so we are putting these up now; we are resizing and still have to watermark.

Firms credited on the drawings include Foster and Parters, ARUP, OLIN and Davis Langdon.

Gov. Brown gives fast-track status to Apple headquarters

2012-07-03T17:26:00-04:00

"Apple's state-of-the art campus brings at least $100 million dollars in investment to California and generates no additional greenhouse gas emissions," Brown said in a statement to this newspaper, listing two of the requirements Apple had met to qualify under the law. "On-site fuel cells and 650,000 square feet of solar panels will provide clean, renewable energy for more than 12,000 Apple employees on the new campus."