Since his famous presentation in front of the Cupertino City Council on June 7th, 2011 (just one day after presenting at the 2011 WWDC), Steve Jobs’ vision of bringing a spaceship-inspired Apple headquarters down to earth has been slowly coming to life.
The headquarters, which Jobs wanted to build to house 12,000-13,000 Apple employees under one roof rather than renting satellite offices, is located on an old Hewlett-Packard property in the area between Tantau North Wolfe, Homestead and the 280 freeway near the existing Headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop.
”It’s a little like a spaceship landed,” Jobs said in the 2011 presentation. As we start to see the headquarters fade out of existing primarily in renderings and actually take shape in the real world, the construction does certainly look like the beginning of a spaceship being built on some mysterious earth-like planet.
More recently, YouTube user ‘myithz’ has been sharing updates of the construction using his drone on YouTube. Just two days ago, ‘myithz’ uploaded a three-minute clip of drone footage using crystal-clear 4K resolution. When seen with this much detail, its clear just how massive the 2.8 million-square-feet building really is.
One of the more convincing arguments that Jobs gave the City Council in 2011 was that the headquarters would run entirely on renewable energy. The eco-friendly campus, which was designed by Norman Foster Design, is expected to open in 2016.
Additional details about the eco-friendly build include:
- Design will include a courtyard in the middle and curved glass all the way around.
- Jobs is planning on transforming an area that’s 20% landscaping to 80% landscaping by putting most of the building’s parking underground.
- There are 3,700 trees in the area at the moment, Jobs has hired an arborist from Stanford to take the area up to 6,000 trees.
- The design includes a four-story high building and four-story parking structure.
- The campus will include an energy center, and natural gas will be the primary source of power, using the grid as backup.
- There will be an auditorium, fitness center and some R & D buildings.
- Jobs plans a 40% increase in Apple employees going from 9,500 today to 13, 000 in 2015.
- He wants to increase the campus’ space 20% from 2.6 million to 3.1 million square feet.
- Landscaping will increase 60% from 3,700 to 6,000.
- Surface parking will decrease 90% from 9,800 to 1,200 .
- The building footprint will decrease 30% from 1.4 million to 1 million.
- Cafeterias will fit 3,000 people at a sitting.
- The whole building will be designed with the utmost concern for employee safety.
- Apple currently has 20 buses running on bio-diesel fuel for its employees and Jobs thinks that system will work well with the new campus.
