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

With all due respect...

[ameyer17]

So what if it looks like a tape reel?

Re:With all due respect...

[erroneus]

Looks like a "walled garden" to me.

Re:With all due respect...

[Andrio]

Apple _does_ have a patent on rounded corners.

Re:With all due respect...

[tlhIngan]

No, you don't want round. The big problem with round is that it's perfectly symmetric. With a rectangle, or even a pentagon, there are distinct segments and directions to the building. You know where you're at, you know to get somewhere else you need to head in a certain direction until you see a wall or corner, then head in another direction. e.g. To get from one place to another in a pentagon, you know you need to walk one way, pass 1 or 2 corners, then walk a certain distance to your destination.

In a circle, every part of the building you're in looks the same. You may know you have to travel 37 degrees around the arc, but after walking for a bit you aren't quite sure how many degrees you've traveled because there are no references - it all looks the same. To overcome this you need either really good labeling, or you have to add architectural landmarks to (virtually) break up the circle into physically "different" segments.

There are marvelous inventions called "windows" (the ones NOT by Microsoft) that let you have an external reference so walking one step in any direction doesn't look the same at all.

There's also the other marvelous invention in your smartphone known as a compass that moves as you move about the circle.

Of course, the nice thing with closed buildings like a circle or pentagon is that with sufficient exits, there is only a maximum distance one needs to walk to get from any point. Anyone having to deal with regular linear buildings knows of how it seems everything is always located at the other side.

Re:With all due respect...

[Megane]

They could put Steve's coffin/ashes at the middle of it to make it rotate. After all, the world revolves around him! Who needs perpetual motion when you can use RDF power!

Re:With all due respect...

[BonThomme]

or use nanometers

It looks like a tire

[Anonymous Coward]

A 1/2" reel of computer tape has a much smaller hub diameter.

This takes the prize.

[bennomatic]

Stupidest Apple-trolling article on /. ever. And considering the number of Apple trolling articles on /., that's saying something.

Uh, gotta be funny. In Soviet Russia, Apple trolls /.!

Re:This takes the prize.

[hey!]

Truly there are things about Apple for which we can be critical. An office building is not one of them.

Personally, I think the building is cool. I think that companies should do better than to just shove their workers into cubicle farms and expect them to be happy and productive.

That doesn't mean that this project should be above criticism. It's more than just a building; or even an ordinary campus. It's a one-of-a-kind project. Projects like this are risky; if this doesn't work out Apple will own one giant, very expensive white elephant. What's more lavish corporate headquarters are often a sign that a company has jumped the shark -- that it's focused on ego and not on making customers happy while controlling costs.

A friend of mine once worked for a high tech company that attempted a lavish, beautiful, eco-chic campus. As the costs spiraled, they decided to reduce the scope of the project so that only management and marketing moved into the fancy new campus. Engineering remained in their giant cubicle farm miles away. Yes, they went there. The compny spent ten years building that new headquarters, but two years after moving they were forced to sell it. They were asking 62 million, which would have been selling at a loss. They got 30.

I don't expect Apple's new headquarters will be a disaster like that. I believe and hope it will be a great success. But people are right to be skeptical of a project like that.

Re:Ring = Long Building

[I'm New Around Here]

Well, I wonder why R&D is shuffled off to the rectangular buildings away from the glorious ring.

Why don't they like those engineers?

Re:Ring = Long Building

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate natural light. It burns skin, hurts eyes, washes out color, and makes stuff hot. Fuck outside and anyone who likes it.

At the Church of Apple

[MrKaos]

This is the Vatican.

Re:At the Church of Apple

[ebno-10db]

I'll take the one in Rome - much better artwork.

Re: At the Church of Apple

[gmhowell]

But the one in Rome is infested with batshit crazy brainwashed doomsday cult members obsessed with sex they do nothing know about.

I thought you were going to explain why it's not like Apple?

(Sent from my iPhone or MacBook or MacMini.)

The Ring...

[Longjmp]

I can't believe no one came up with this yet:

One ring to rule them all...

;-)

Looks just like Spy Central UK (GCHQ)

[weeble]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters

All all glass building with lots of computers and the terminals with the world's secrets flashing across. An interesting concept.

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!

[gmhowell]

No glass walls. No diagonal travel. Fewer buttons than a Wonkavator. Lame.

What kind of a critique is that?

[Art3x]

doesn't look all that different from an old-school $3.95 6250 BPI magnetic tape reel

Or a ring, bracelet, flying saucer, hoola hoop, donut, or a million other things that are round. What is your point?

Re:What kind of a critique is that?

[maccodemonkey]

doesn't look all that different from an old-school $3.95 6250 BPI magnetic tape reel

Or a ring, bracelet, flying saucer, hoola hoop, donut, or a million other things that are round. What is your point?

News flash! Round things look like other round things! How could Apple not have seen this coming!?!?

Our economic overlords

[PopeRatzo]

I have to wonder about a company who has lost 30% of it's stock price in the last year building a $5B headquarters.

I mean, I'm grateful to AAPL, since it put my daughter through college, but I gotta say, I'm glad I got out at $680.

Re:Our economic overlords

[Jeremi]

I have to wonder about a company who has lost 30% of it's stock price in the last year building a $5B headquarters.

When you're sitting on $147 billion in cash, $5 billion for new headquarters is quite affordable... whether or not it's the best possible use of that money, I don't know, but it's definitely not going to bankrupt Apple.

Re:Wait for the Inevitable

[FatLittleMonkey]

Samsung: Korean HQ

Gates Foundation: Seattle HQ

Microsoft:Redmond Campus

Re:Pentagon

[cold fjord]

The Pentagon? No, but you're thinking is the right general direction: Another agency did it first.

It's still in Cupertino

[Animats]

Building that in Cupertino is a good thing for the city. It's a blah suburb.

Now here's a prestige research center - IBM Alamaden Research Center. That place produced several Nobel Prizes. It's on an isolated mountaintop. You drive for a mile after entering the property before reaching the buildings. The view from the cafeteria is of mountains, with no other buildings in sight.

It's also half-empty since IBM cut back.

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.