With the success that Apple has achieved over the past decade, it's perhaps no surprise that it has outgrown its original "Infinite Loop" campus and is in need of a new flagship headquarters to bring the teams together under one roof. Since Steve Jobs will undoubtedly have been the driving force behind the building's conceptual design and hey, it's Apple, the architecture for the new campus is unlike anything else ever built. Indeed, Apple saw fit to engage London-based über-architect Sir Norman Foster and his team, a company known for its unashamedly modern, hi-tech and unique approaches to large buildings such as the Stanstead and Hong Kong airports, the American Air Museum, the Berlin Reichstag, the Dallas Opera House, The Smithsonian and part of the World Trade Center re-development. The statistics of the proposed building are staggering.
A separate 1,000-seater underground auditorium (for product announcements to the media, undoubtedly), fitness center and natural gas-burning power generation plant complete the plan. The campus will be self-sufficient for power, with the national grid acting only as a back-up. Apple, and Steve Jobs in particular, was stung by criticism of its green credentials from environmental groups some years ago, so you can be sure that a mix of state-of-the-art green technologies will be employed to control the building's environment ... something that Foster + Partners and the building engineers Arup reportedly have long experience in.
It should be stressed that at this time this is a planning application only. Steve Jobs, however, commended the plan to the Cupertino City Council in person, describing it as a "landed spacecraft" and "a shot at creating the best office building in the world." Later, Cupertino's Mayor Gilbert Wong remarked, "there is no chance we are saying no!" Apple is hoping to move on to the new campus in 2015.
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