Apple Submits Updated Campus 2 Plans to Cupertino | Hacker News Reader

Apple Submits Updated Campus 2 Plans to Cupertino

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137 pointsdavidedicillo53 comments

It's interesting to look at these renderings in the context of the story from a couple of days ago about working out at the office (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314922).

Treadmills in a conference room are certainly better than sitting all day. But instead of a treadmill, I'd rather just work in an office where I could go outside and take a walk. I hope more companies will start thinking about office design in the way that Apple has, even if they do it on a smaller scale.

When I worked at Apple, I lived about half a mile from campus. I'd often go a week without even getting into my car; I could walk to everything important, including grocery stores. There were three very good bookstores within a 20 minute walk [now all out of business, btw].

I miss that.

I worked down the street from Apple in the late '80s, early '90s, at a place on DeAnza a little south of McClellan, and lived in the apartments that border Stelling and the 280, so biked through that area a lot.

What were the three bookstores? I only remember "A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books" being reasonably close to that area.

We probably lived in the same apartment complex then (late 80s, early 90s).

There were "A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books", "Computer Literacy" and Staceys.

For a while in '91-92, Computer Literacy was actually _in_ Infinite Loop building #1, and then they started to fail and went online or something.

I can't imagine life not being that way. I live in NYC and can walk to everything important, or take a short subway ride to anything else. I've gone months without getting in a car- if I ever move I think I'd miss that a lot.

It's a huge reason why I constantly miss NYC. Right now I live in suburbia and don't get to walk very often.

You don't know what you've got till it's gone... etc.

Same here, in Raleigh, NC. Haven't had a car in years. Its been the best decision I've ever made for my own peace of mind.

If you're willing to walk a bit and take some buses, you don't need a car. And you find really cool places while walking that else you'd never know existed.

It is the same way in Chicago as well. I went 2 years without driving a car at all, but obviously taxis were a necessity.

I was actually penalized when I renewed auto insurance for not carrying it for 2 years, despite not owning a car nor driving at all.

Robust public transportation should be a huge initiative for all major cities, and even more so ones that are growing quickly. The efficiencies, environmental impact, and convenience for citizens are too much to ignore.

Same here in Victoria, BC. (population: ~300,000) I think downtown living in most cities is similar.

Wow, someone from Victoria! That's a rarity. I went to UVic and lived in Vic for about three years. Getting around in Vic without a car is definitely a little more difficult, mostly because the bus service is so cruddy.

Still, I miss Victoria. I try to get back every year for the Beerfest.

Small world :) There are at least a few of us here on HN (that I know of).

Everything I need is downtown so I rarely bus anywhere. Living out by uvic would be annoying without a vehicle though.

I'm from Victoria as well. I didn't think anyone else on hn was from here.

I do this now in Cambridge, MA.

I really can't imagine myself living in a place where I'm required by circumstance to drive everywhere. Walking, public transport, taxis and Zipcar cover all the bases.

http://www.walkscore.com/score/Central-Sq.-Cambridge-MA

One can only applaud this. You do wonder sometimes why companies spent so few $$ on relaxing office buildings. Looking into nature increases productivity and well-being; also there are a lot of findings on how to organize work floors for optimal collaboration etc. Most companies are just not interested. Doesn't make sense to me (except for short-term profits).

I was watching 'The Pixar Story' the other day and they talked about the campus they opened in 2000. Jobs talked about the importance of 'unplanned interactions' and workplace being key to the success of a creative company.

http://www.armchaircommentary.com/2011/10/amazon-goes-to-pix...

"Main Building

The Pixar campus opened in 2000. It was built on the location of an old canning factory and the factory vibe inspired the architecture. Steve Jobs, one of the Pixar founders was heavily involved in the design. He wanted Pixar's main building to serve as a central gathering place where employees would come several times a day to interact and share ideas. In service of this goal a cafeteria, coffee shop and the employee mail room were clustered within steps of each other within the atrium of the main building. Pixar lore is that Jobs was so obsessed with the idea of all employees venturing to this area at least once a day that he advocated for only having one bathroom on the campus. He was overruled."

For the curious, "The Pixar Story" is available on Netflix Instant

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/The_Pixar_Story/70083532?t...

On the other hand, more and more offices at Apple are in lockdown areas (where the badge that gives you access to the building does not necessarily give you access). It's going to be interesting to see how these two forces interact with each other. Cafeterias and common areas have been exempt from the lockdown trend, but I'm not sure if this is sufficient in the long term to guarantee enough "unplanned interactions".

I am aware about the nature/well-being (I even read a study regarding sports performance), but I have no knowledge on the findings on how to organize work floors. Care to share some links? Thanks.

Start with Jane Jacobs (google her, quite famous), then read her "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". It's helps you understand why cities work, why they don't, what makes a neighbourhood, what destroys them and how almost everything city planners and governments think matters, actually doesn't.

After that, read the Malcolm Gladwell article how her findings can be applied to office culture. http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_12_11_a_working.html

After all that, apply all that to offices you've seen.

The Jane Jacobs book looks fascinating, I just ordered a copy along with some other books I was buying :) Thank you.

Yeah, it's about short-term profits but also because many people still don't think of style or taste as being important to their long-term profits either.

Agreed, I can only hope if America keeps shifting toward high tech jobs, corporate leader will realize that the most efficient companies will win out; and nothing makes for an efficient company like happy employees. Not everyone is going to be able to make cool building looking out into nature, but employee happiness should be addressed somewhere in the budget.

It's beautiful. After many decades of Silicon Valley turning from orchards and trees into strip malls and office parks, it looks like Steve wanted to take a little slice of the Valley and turn it back. The building itself takes up a very small part of the land.

It's a simple concept. Make a place that people want to be and they'll come and they'll stay. Steve knew that he leaned heavily on each and every one of his employees, and that they delivered. I speculate that this was his vision on how to extend those people even further, by exciting them about the simple state of being on the Apple campus.

That's one kickass walled garden... just what I'd expect from Apple. ;)

This building is amazing on so many levels. It's got a very Zen quality to it, the symbolism of the full circle, and to my geek mind it reminded me of the iPod click wheel (wonder if the restaurant area is where the "menu" would be? :-P) It almost feels like last Steve's last One More Thing...

Apple ought to make these images available in resolutions suitable for desktop backgrounds...

Who needs porn when you can have renderings of a corporate campus!

Definitely. I was very disappointed when I clicked one of the images and was rewarded with a page with a smaller version. Who does that?

My wife is a landscape architect. I think she likes Apple even more, now.

When I worked for HP, they were constantly trying to shut down buildings or do things which made the office spaces less desirable to employees to save money.

It's good to see Apple making things better.

PDFs also aren't working for me. Does anyone know if there is a higher-res picture of the rendering posted? I would love a version as close to 1920x1080 as possible! (http://cdn.iphoneincanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Scre...)

The darker colored roof perhaps suggests photovoltaic arrays rather than a high albedo roof as depicted in the original rendering.

Does someone have a mirror of the plans? The links in the article don't work for me because of the load.

Doesn't look like much has changed from http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/13/apples-new-headquarters/ which has links to scribed uploads.

The big PDFs aren't loading for me. Is the idea that the boxes on the bottom are the parking lots, and everyone needs to walk across the big field to get to the building? How far is that? Is there handicapped parking somewhere else?

There are 2 levels of parking underneath the main building. http://www.scribd.com/doc/62205913/FloorPlan-Cross-Section

Is there also some other 4-level parking structure somewhere? The scribd documents don't zoom quite enough to actually read the text.

That big diagonal looking structure seen in the site plan is a 4 story car park, with 3 levels sunken below grade (depending on which side of the structure you are looking at).

There are an additional 2 levels of parking below the main building, and a few other auxiliary buildings, including a remote physical plant.

the proposed vehicle circulation routes appear at odds with the renders. having a road running immediately around the outside of the building will certainly ruin the "embedded in nature" aesthetic they've got going on there.

A road? Were you looking at the floor plan for one of the underground parking levels?

first diagram in the link is traffic flow. there's a blue circle going all the way around the building. appleinsider has kindly cropped out any sort of legend, i suppose it could be underground though.

Ahh, you're right. I took a look at the PDFs and the blue circle indicates emergency access routes.

For those that have been following the development of the new Apple campus, there aren't a lot of changes from when the plans were first released several months back, so no need to click through to the article.

Am I the only one seeing this?

http://f.cl.ly/items/3M3D0X1Q3i3i0k2U3B3y/AppleCampusSpinner...

I wonder how the workspaces will be arranged; it seems like it might be tricky to mitigate glare on a glossy display with natural light coming in on all sides.

They could do a few things about it. The building is designed with big 10' horizontal louvers covering the facades, which will diffuse a lot of light so it isn't as intense. They can also coat the glazing with special film to reduce the effect. Additionally, it helps that the floor plates are really deep.

No words can describe how freaking awesome this is.

This could be one of the most influential and inspiring buildings in the world.

Up there with the Burj.

Can we really call the Burj Khalifa influential when it hasn't even been around for 2 years? As for inspiring, well I guess it's a matter of personal taste but giant needle-cock buildings never did inspire me personally.

Maybe something like the Giza Pyramids, Gaudi's buildings, Taj Mahal or the Sydney Opera House would've provided a grander point of reference if you were going for that.

May I suggest you have a look at some of these in google image search:

pier luigi nervi

centre pompidou paris

lloyds of london

frei otto gridshell structure

norman foster masdar

norman foster gherkin

zaha hadid bmw factory

zaha hadid wolfsburg

jean nouvel institut du monde arabe

renzo piano padre pio

jean nouvel quai branly

schlumberger research centre

madrid barajas airport

Thats kind of a random selection from the 'hi-tech' taster menu.

Meh.

While it is certainly interesting from far away and above, very few people will see this building from that perspective. On the ground, this is going to look like a rather dull 4 story glass and concrete wall. There is nothing iconic or immense about it to the average visitor.

As far as I can tell, the wow factor is limited to those with helicopters.

Am I the only one that fails to see what is so special about a donut shaped 4 storey building in a park like setting?

cupertino.org seems to be down :(

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