The previous shots taken of the site showed that all the buildings had been demolished and the land was cleared for construction of the new spaceship style HQ. It is doughnuts shaped four storeys circular building which will have huge walls of glass, housing around 14,000 employees of Apple in Cupertino, California enabling them to look out from both sides of the ring.
An architect,Peter Arbour, for Seele, the company which makes glass staircases in Apple stores, all around the world, informed Bloomberg that it was like a six kilometres of glass. Apple had received the final approval from the City of Cupertino last November to start building the 2.8 million square foot campus where the earlier HP campus had previously stood on the site and now had been demolished.
The new campus is located around a mile east of its existing headquarters which is also based in the heart of Silicon Valley in Cupertino.The building which has been designed by Lord Norman Foster will be powered by renewable energy which will be sourced from fuel cell plants together with rooftop photovoltaic arrays.
Underground Car Parking Facilities
A presentation to the City Council in the year 2011 was given by late CEO with regards to the proposed building’s aesthetics and surround environment of the project, where most of the building’s car parking facilities would be underground providing space for 6,000 indigenous trees which would include persimmons, apples, plums, cherry and apricots.
Due to the advanced natural ventilation along with radiant cooling, the need for air conditioning would not be necessary. The European headquarters of Apple are based in Cork in southern Ireland having around 3,300 staff working there.
Architects for the colossal structure have been appointed from the British firm Foster+Partners whose previous projects include Canary Wharf Underground Station, Stansted Airport, London’s Millenium Bridge, Wembley Stadium, HSBC HQ at Canary Wharf, the Maclaren Technology Centre and the Heast Tower in New York.
Earth Friendly and Self Sufficient
Norman Foster in an interview with Architectural Record commented on how he had been inspired with the idea of a London square with houses surrounding a parkand this eventually led him into the circular design surrounding the large outdoor park.
He further revealed that according to the original plan, there was no circular `spaceship’ structure and the structure of one building with a park was the result of very intensive process. Aiming to be earth friendly and self-sufficient, the materials used for the construction are of the highest quality.
According to an insider, all of the interior wood is harvested from specific species of maple with only finer quality `heartwood’ at the centre of the trees would be used. A segment of the building is the restaurant opening up to the landscape and to combat the size of the building the section have been divided into cafes, lobbies and entrances.
