Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 11, just released today. One of the biggest updates that should get the attention of architects is ARKit, Apple's new augmented reality framework. ARKit provides the opportunity to for Apple and 3rd party developers to create AR experiences anew, or to... View full entry
It has also been remarkable to watch Amazon pursue a dramatically different strategy. Its plans for a second headquarters suggest that in terms of architecture and campus planning it wants to be everything Apple is not. It wants to lean into the city — and thorny questions about gentrification and housing prices, to the extent that they will be a natural byproduct of this process — rather than away from it. — Los Angeles Times
"Though he took a very different path to get there," Hawthorne writes in his LAT opinion piece analyzing Apple & Amazon's lofty headquarters ambitions with a focus on urban integration (or the complete lack thereof), "Bezos ultimately reached the same conclusion Jobs did: that the wealthiest... View full entry
Apple’s iPhone X event yesterday wasn’t just about its latest pocket computer. It was also its first opportunity to show off its ambitious new Apple Park “spaceship” campus to the hundreds of journalists, industry executives and “friends of Apple” in attendance. — recode.net
Photo by Recode's Dan FrommerPhoto by Recode's Dan FrommerPhoto by Recode's Dan FrommerPhoto by Recode's Dan FrommerPhoto by Recode's Dan FrommerCheck out the article on Recode for the full photo gallery. View full entry
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... View full entry
Apple Park is unlike any other product Ive has worked on. There will be only one campus—in contrast to the ubiquity of Apple’s phones and computers—and it doesn’t fit in a pocket or a hand. Yet Ive applied the same design process he brings to technological devices: prototyping to minimize any issues with the end result and to narrow what he calls the delta between the vision and the reality of a project. — WSJ. Magazine
“A lot of the buildings that are being built at the moment are products of software-only cultures,” says Ive. “Because we understand making, we’ll build [a prototype] and try it and use it, and see what works and what doesn’t.” View full entry
Valdsgaard believes Apple’s know-how and recent progress within AR will be a crucial complement to Ikea’s in-house competencies. Another major benefit of working with Apple is the company’s gigantic ecosystem of users. — Business Insider
Ikea will partner with Apple to co-build an AR-based shopping app that will enable its users to try out virtual furniture at home before making buying decisions. Michael Valdsgaard, Leader of Digital Transformation at Inter Ikea, noted that the app is intended not to replace the... View full entry
As with any Apple product, its shape would be determined by its function. This would be a workplace where people were open to each other and open to nature, and the key to that would be modular sections, known as pods, for work or collaboration. — Steven Levy for WIRED
Since 2009, Foster and Partners have been working on a new headquarters for the tech giant Apple, originally in close collaboration with Steve Jobs, its founder, who saw it as one of his last crucial contribution to his legacy. Even though dramatic photographs of the ring-shaped structure have... View full entry
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... View full entry
French website Mac Generation has obtained photos of newly completed portions of the Apple Campus 2 as designed by Foster + Partners. The exterior, which in renderings possessed a certain monolithic frisbee quality, is far more vivid in real life. Here are photos of both the interior and exterior... View full entry
Apple will open a mega-campus inside London’s Battersea Power Station in a major boon for the developers behind the Grade II-listed building’s regeneration.
The tech giant will take over 500,000 sq ft of the power station’s Boiler House, spanning six floors. Around 1,4000 staff are expected to move into the Apple campus in 2021.
— The Spaces
Take a look back at Archinect's coverage of the Battersea Power Station development:First images of BIG’s Malaysia Square in London’s Battersea Power StationBIG appointed to design public square for revamped Battersea Power StationFrank Gehry about his Battersea Power Station project, Norman... View full entry
The Spaceship, as many have nicknamed it, is over one mile in circumference—that's wider than the Pentagon. When it’s completed later this year it will house 13,000 employees [...]
Campus 2 will run entirely on clean energy, powered by renewable sources. But what’s really grabbed our attention are the thousands of panels of curved window panes—the largest pieces of structural glass ever made [...]
Equally cool are the 60,000 pounds of hollow concrete slabs that allow the building to “breathe”
— popsci.com
According to PopSci, here are some integral stats to Apple's new "spaceship" Campus 2, set to finish later this year:176: Acres the new Campus will occupy1.23 million: Square footage of glass involved in the project3,000: Approximate total number of glass panes used7,000: Weight, in pounds, of... View full entry
The new building design introduced massive 40 foot sliding glass doors that could one day turn that store into an iCar showroom if they wanted to.
The estimated breakdown of the costs started with the shell of the building costing Apple $19 million. Some of the other costs included $1 million on the staircase alone. If there's 30 stairs that $33,333 per stair.
— Patently Apple
While Norman Foster's "spaceship" design for the Apple Campus has attracted its own share of critiques for possibly reviving older corporate design models, this newly refurbished Apple Store appears to be heading for a far more multi-faceted (and luxurious) future. In an era where many prefer to... View full entry
virtually all of downtown’s brokers and landlords had clamored to attract the tech giant. Only a handful of locations were said to be seriously in the running, all historic sites on Broadway.
“Apple is known to do things that are outside-of-the-box and unorthodox,” said broker Gabe Kadosh of Colliers International. “It creates a bigger splash by going in a historic building.” [...]
“When it becomes fully known, the pricing is going to skyrocket,” said Kadosh.
— labusinessjournal.com
Related on Archinect:A critical look at Downtown L.A.'s ambitious plans for two new public parksHow L.A. can reboot its "creative economy" so artists can actually live in townHow Downtown LA's skyline evolved over the last half centuryWhy Steve Jobs Obsessed About Office Design (And, Yes, Bathroom... View full entry
When Apple finishes its new $5 billion headquarters in Cupertino, California, the technorati will ooh and ahh over its otherworldly architecture, and Apple will pat itself on the back for yet another example of "innovation." ...But few are aware that Apple’s monumental project is already outdated, mimicking a half-century of stagnant suburban corporate campuses that isolated themselves—by design—from the communities their products were supposed to impact. — Fast Company Design
This fascinating article delves into the soul-sucking thinking behind isolated corporate behemoth design, which essentially captures the employee for the entire day and encourages a detached, "Who cares; I've got mine!" thinking towards maintaining urban infrastructure. Consider this:Connecticut... View full entry
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 AC... View full entry
