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Critic Pans Apple's New Campus As a Retrograde Cocoon
theodp writes "LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne isn't exactly bullish on Apple's proposed new headquarters, which will hold 12,000 Apple employees in its 2.8 million sq ft. Described by Apple as 'a serene and secure environment' for its employees, Hawthorne says the new campus 'keeps itself aloof from the world around it to a degree that is unusual even in a part of California dominated by office parks. The proposed building is essentially one very long hallway connecting endlessly with itself.' Corporate architecture of this kind, adds Hawthorne, seems to promote a mindset decried by Berkeley prof Louise A. Mozingo. 'If all you see in your workday are your co-workers and all you see out your window is the green perimeter of your carefully tended property,' Mozingo writes, and you drive to and from work in the cocoon of your private car, 'the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
The cocoon must be sealed to contain the reality distortion field!
Isnt that Apple's business model anyway?
one very long hallway connecting endlessly with itself
In other words, it'll be even more of an infinite loop than Apple's current Infinite Loop campus. Is it even possible for things to be "more infinite"?
People who have nothing better to do than criticize some company's proposed building needs to get a life.
'the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
Or maybe it is just an office building and the product is defined by the corporate culture and people who presumably explore the community beyond work and home.
Architecture is an art. Some like, some don't. It is an interesting viewpoint but trying to link the shape of a building to Apple employees social responsibilities is a bit of a stretch. Especially since most university campuses are cocoons in of themselves yet successfully promote global social responsibilities.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Seems a little backward that there would be complaints that workers might look out their windows and see grass, trees, and other natural things.
Everything I've read on productivity and mental health would suggest it would be beneficial to have a less "urban" view out your window.
'the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
Yeah and...so what? Is that a fancy way of saying that office workers should work in the 'hood so, what, I feel some personal responsibility for fixing it? Does that mean I need to work in the hood so I can stare at it all day?
'If all you see in your workday are your co-workers and all you see out your window is the green perimeter of your carefully tended property,
Of course I see my coworkers when I'm at work. That's why they call it work. That's what I'm there to do. And if my workplace can be nice and in nature, hey, cool.
Look, I'm not an Apple fan. I give them shit for all kinds of things. Building a nice work environment for their employees is not on the list of things I will give them shit for. And I don't see it as the job of any company, or any employee, to intentionally increase their connection, proximity, or exposure to increasing urban density. Some people like dense urban areas, some don't, but it's not anybody's responsibility to specifically increase density.
This is predictable coming from an urban paper like the LA Times. They see concrete and steel as desirable. Green things are to be assaulted at all turns. But there are others of us who like trees, shade, grass, and other nice things. The goal isn't to be disconnected from anything - it's to be able to hear something other than traffic noise, and see something other than dirty man-made surfaces while at work.
Hey, I think it sounds nice. I think the LA Times needs to go camping and discover that there's more to life than concrete.
If you share a building with tons of other companies, and if the view out your window is a busy thoroughfare, is 'the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm' near at heart and therefore contributing to some architectural faux-topia?
Oh wait, that's New York City, where nobody looks you in the eye and if somebody says 'Good Morning' to you then you get ready to defend yourself. 'Shared responsibility in a collective metropolitan realm' indeed. Or Los Angeles, where there are no thoroughfares because everybody drives everywhere anyway.
I also like the posts to the effect of 'architecture is art and discussing art is good.' I guess, but seriously, an 'architecture critic' for a newspaper? Theatre critics are at least answering the question 'should I go see this show,' but wtf is an architecture critic doing? 'Should I go hang out at this corporate campus?'
There is no grit, dirt or crime in Cupertino, or anywhere near it, until you get to East Palo Alto or downtown San Jose. A more open Apple campus interconnected with the rest of its neighborhood would get more clean, shiny, happy people. But at least people from outside Apple, tired for different reasons. With some different perspectives, some of which might not even be IT. Some might not even be corporate. That exposure would humanize the day, not corporatize it in every way.
And since Apple's products are so personal, more diversity in the environment its people produce from would also inform the products we get from it.
But then, this is the company that gave us the white head wires that indicate the wearer is in their own personal universe, totally tailored by and for themselves.
Apple has become "narcissism for the rest of us", in a society increasingly insistent in seeing nothing but itself in a retouched mirror. The subtitle to this story shows the fear of the outside that nerds have raised to a high art.
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make install -not war
The problem isn't with downtown cores. The problem is with how Americans tend to build them. The "concrete jungle" you speak of is a uniquely-American mistake.
Of course such downtown areas will be shitty and imbalanced if you only have downtowns where nobody lives, and people only come from the suburbs to work there from 0900 to 1700 on weekdays.
But if you do it sensibly, like is done in Europe, Asia and even American-like countries like Canada and Australia, you end up with excellent areas that are very livable. People end up living downtown, rather than just working there. Because of this, there are often extensive parks and green space. There is nightlife. There is a community spirit that you just don't find in the suburbs.
Now, this sort of a downtown area does depend on some things that many Americans mistakenly consider "socialist" or even "communist", like good public transit. That's why America only has a few good downtown areas, and they are always in older cities like Chicago and New York City. Americans today have such a warped view that they probably couldn't implement a good downtown, even if they tried their hardest.
Apple wants to build the kind of building that Apple wants to build. And OF COURSE some architect who was NOT awarded the job is going to have some criticism, in order to massage his own ego.
I used to live not far from there. Did it even occur to him that the employees DO NOT WANT to see much that is beyond the campus? That being there, and isolated, might actually afford a sense of relief?
On the city's website is a better overview picture, as well as a map showing how it fits into the city.
http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?page=1107
...I'll take a city any day.
I worked on a corporate campus that was well integrated into the city of Berkeley, CA, for instance. Being able to easily go have lunch somewhere interesting, or stop by a bookstore, or visit the farmers' market--in other words, do the normal stuff that human beings like to do, as opposed to what food-court designers like to do--was a huge benefit of my job being located where it was.
Working in an office park in South San Francisco, on the other hand, was like being perpetually stuck at the airport. My company provided a video game room to compensate. But it was like being an intelligent animal given a tire to play with at a poorly designed zoo. It is amazing to me that a place where tens of thousands of people work could be designed with so little thought to their needs other than cubicle space.
This is why Silicon Valley companies such as Google provide all these seemingly cool benefits such as gourmet cafeterias. The office parks and campuses leave a lot to be desired in terms of quality of life when you're hiring people who may have just moved from a cool college town. As nice as the cafeteria at Google is, I doubt it's as cool as the gourmet gulch I left behind in Berkeley.
Windows. Malls don't tend to have 'em in very great abundance.
Nor do Macs, incidentally. For not much more than the price of a copy of Windows designed to run on a Mac (Windows 7 Home Premium retail), one could buy a nettop with its own copy of Windows (Windows 7 Home Premium OEM) and stick it on the KVM next to a Mac mini.
It seems like that is the architect's main objection: the facility will not be nearly as shitty as facilities other workers have to deal with, and somehow that unfairness equates to bad design?
How will employees commute between home and this new campus? Is it close enough to walk or bike? Is there adequate public transit? Or will most employees have to drive? The article quotes UC Berkeley architecture professor Louise A. Mozingo that a campus like this "precludes the concentration of population that makes public transportation feasible for governments and users."
Yes it does, as do you and everybody else who lives in a society. Go move to a cabin in the woods if you don't like it.
Regarding taxes, I recall them trying to figure a way to pay less. Which is unsurprising, it's the same thing all corporations do.
our government is the people organized to do things to protect our rights.
And a lot of university graduates confuse rights with entitlements, which they call positive rights. For example, the article mentions that cocoon campuses like this make public transit more difficult. Is public transit a "right" or a mere entitlement?
"the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
Hmmmm.... that same notion didn't seem to arise on Wall street or in the banking sector even though they are generally situated in the heart of cities... maybe this pop-psychological link to the community doesn't override all the other factors, like being either a caring person or a sociopath? Jus' sayin'.
and all you see out your window is the green perimeter
Block up the windows.
Office workers should consider themselves bloody lucky to either have a window to stare out of, or enough time away from doing their work to make one worthwhile. Isn't the desktop image on their monitors enough?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
'the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant.'
Jesus. I can't describe in words how contemptuous I am of anybody who would utter those words with a straight face.
The crazy thing is, I would expect anybody who thinks that way to be an Apple zealot in the first place.
Cupertino is mostly suburban housing and strip malls. Apple's plan would be an improvement.
As isolated corporate campuses go, it's not very isolated. Just in Silicon Valley, there are far more isolated HQs. There's Oracle HQ, which is surrounded by water on three sides and has a huge lawn on the fourth. Like Larry Ellison, it's an in-your-face statement of arrogance.
Google HQ is somewhat isolated; they now have almost all of the Shoreline Industrial Park. Their architecture is standard industrial park, built for SGI before SGI tanked.
For over-the-top corporate HQ design, there's Excite@Home. Yes, they're long gone. But before that dot-com went bust, they built an awesome headquarters complex on a finger of land a full mile out in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It has spectacular architecture, isolation, impressive open spaces, baseball fields, a health club with Olympic size pool, and a marina. Excite@Home went bust before moving in. The buildings were vacant for years, as a real estate company tried to rent them out. It was strange to walk through the huge complex of beautifully maintained empty office buildings. EA, Dreamworks, and some pharma companies now rent space there. It's still underutilized.
IBM's Almaden Research Center is the purest expression of the isolated research center. It's on a mountaintop south of San Jose, surrounded by open land and parks. You enter through a modest gate, then drive half a mile through the hills, seeing nothing but open land and trees. Then you see IBM's glass and steel buildings. The view of the mountains from the cafeteria is spectacular. Much good work came out of there during IBM's glory years, including disk drive technology and several Nobel prizes. Today it's a shadow of what it once was.
Compared to all of those, Apple's planned HQ is nothing.
Have you actually looked at the map you've linked? It's a suburban wasteland, with streets after streets filled with nothing, where there is nothing to do, to see, to experience and even worth noting. It's a vast waste of space where those who live in it are forced to live in a bubble, void of any community experience and a sense of belonging. It's a place where people risk to be prisoners in their own homes and, to have the change to escape their prison, they must have a car and able to drive it for long periods of time, through a labyrinth of empty suburban roads where everything is dull and looks the same and then through a soulless interstate. That, Marie of Romania, is a place that is designed to suck the life out of you and leave you alone with your miserable life, and incidentally that's exactly one of the points that Christopher Hawthorne made regarding Apple's project.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
"Collective metropolitan realm"? My ass. The Valley blows. It's nothing but ugly-office parks, horrendously overpriced (and shitty) housing and strip-malls. Utterly devoid of anything remotely resembling a culture worth interacting with.
And remember the only reason to make the building "nice" is to keep the geeks THERE AND WORKING instead of going out and having a life.
in the 2000s hedge funds increasingly became run out of people's basements... take connecticut for example. hedge fund capital of the world... dudes sitting in their mcmansions trading bonds in their man-caves.
now with electronic trading of stocks, and commodities futures... the 'open outcry' pits where traders go to work and yell at each other, have almost disappeared... all that has happened mostly in the last 10 years.
Fucking Apple Stores are not cut off from the world! Fully 1/3rd of all Apple employees work at an Apple Store with the actual consumers of the products. Every Apple Store is like a public entrance to the mothership. The Apple Store is like "onstage," and the mothership is like "backstage."
Yes, creative people need to seclude themselves away while they work their shit out. They need a refuge that is outside of time and space, and they need it to be distraction-free, which it very often is not in an office, with fucking business criminals running around having meetings and and figuring out new ways to fuck the customer over.
And if you work in front of a Mac, iPad, and iPhone all day, with your browser, email, Twitter, IM, 3 fucking FaceTime cameras, and so on, you are anything but cut off from the world.
And when someone is working at Apple, that *is* a kind of community service. I don't care that the company somehow figured out how to take a 40% profit margin on an iPad, I care that they are selling the best $499 computer ever, and in many cases to people who have never used computers before. In other cases, to people who have had many computers, but never one that didn't crash, didn't get viruses, didn't demand they learn I-T, and can show accurate color and render HTML5 correctly. In other cases, they brought computing to a location or task it wasn't in before. For example, they made a phone that runs a Mac-class native C multitrack recorder called FourTrack that I have used to write hundreds of songs over the past 3 years, wherever I was, whatever I was doing when inspiration struck. Thousands of other songwriters also, FourTrack is very popular. You have almost certainly heard songs that were written using it without knowing it, which might not have even been written otherwise. There is one song that the writer said he wrote while halfway up a rock face, and he stopped and recorded the song in his head in FourTrack on iPhone. He could have forgotten it otherwise.
With all the corporate malfeasance going on, a bought US government deliberately bankrupting the country to reduce corporate taxes by even more, the only reason you would be knocking Apple is you are starfucking. Everybody has a fucking opinion on Apple these days, most of them totally fucking misinformed. So tiresome.
I'm uncertain how much information has been made available to the general public, but I would have thought that the way the spaces flow internally will have as much if not more of an impact on the daily experiecne of the workers.
I currently work in a building on an intersection of two major streets in the CBD of Melbourne. On days that I bring my lunch (which I should do more frequently anyway for health and financial reasons) I barely interact with the environment around me. I catch public transport to and from the building and am deposited within 200 meters of the front door. The only interaction I have in the local area is a group of food outlets at the base of a neighbouring building and a gourmet chocolate shop around the corner. I live in the suburbs and do most of my shoping etc... there.
From a spatial point of view, I couldn't be more integrated with my environment, I need to move through it on foot and by tram daily. However I have virtually no connection to it other than scenery as I move to and from the building where I spend my time, mostly at one desk looking at computer monitors. The only wondows are in the management offices and look out at other high rise buildings.
While I understand the connectivity that the critic is suggesting a more urban design may afford, given the sheer size of the complex, it was always going to be introspective for most users rather than deeply interactive with the surrounding environs. People generally don't go to work to chat with their neighbours, and the type of poeple like to be working at Apple are likely to be selected for more driven personalities than the norm.
Buildings can certainly shape interactions by creating affordances, however corporate culture is likely to have a much greater affect on staff behaviours than whether the building is housed in a park or in a tower downtown.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
It's you. I'd suggest not being on amphetamines, or any other psychoactive agent when you walk into public spaces with lots of people in a good mood. You'll end up thinking everyone is looking at you.
"and all you see out your window is the green perimeter of your carefully tended property"
Most of us only have a fabric covered cube wall to look at all day, you insensitive clod!
'If all you see in your workday are your co-workers and all you see out your window is the green perimeter of your carefully tended property,' Mozingo writes, and you drive to and from work in the cocoon of your private car, 'the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
So where did this guy get his geek credentials from anyway? I don't even have window... I get enough UV radiation from my wall o'monitors down here in the basement, thanks. The only scenery I look at is rendered through a pixel shader... And my commute is never lonely - since my mom does all the driving.
This guy really needs to get in touch with reality...