A Peek At Apple's Planned $5B HQ

theodp writes "The Mercury News has an exclusive sneak peek of Apple's planned headquarters in Cupertino, which Steve Jobs personally sought approval for in 2011. 'We found that rectangles or squares or long buildings or buildings with more than four stories would inhibit collaboration,' Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said, explaining the motivation behind the so-called Apple Ring. Nice, but if you wanted to hurt the feelings of the Design Gods at Apple, you could point out that, for all its $5 billion glory, what Apple calls 'the best office building ever' doesn't look all that different from an old-school $3.95 6250 BPI magnetic tape reel (still available on eBay, kids!)."

Comments

Re:Looks just like Spy Central UK (GCHQ)

[clarkkent09]

Except that GCHQ cost £337 million. Is the Apple building really expected to cost $5B? It is not mentioned anywhere in TFA. Seems excessive even for Bay Area , where fixing up half a bridge costs $6.3 billion.

Re:It's a long walk!

[FatLittleMonkey]

I've worked in skyscrapers

Then you didn't have a choice but to work vertically. But I've seen it in campuses with long 4-5 story buildings. People looking for an empty meeting-room will go to the other end of the building before they go one floor up. They'll swap offices on the same floor without a thought, but will announce changing floors like they are going to work in a different building, or even for a different company. They'll walk down the length of the building on a whim to see if someone's in their office, but will ring upstairs first to check first to avoid a "wasted trip". Totally different psychology.