Apple will open its new San Jose HQ just in time for WWDC 2017<\/b>
Hot on the heels of last week\u2019s announcement that Apple\u2019s annual Worldwide Developer\u2019s Conference is moving to San Jose from San Francisco, Apple today announced that the \u2018Apple Park\u2019 campus will open April.
The way Apple is announcing this news illustrates just how deeply the company sees these new offices as a memorial to founder, Steve Jobs.
That\u2019s incredibly appropriate, given Jobs got his first summer job at HP on the site, when he was around 13-years old.
\u201cSteve would have turned 62 this Friday, February 24. To honor his memory and his enduring influence on Apple and the world, the theater at Apple Park will be named the Steve Jobs Theater,\u201d the company said.
Jobs was famed for taking walks with others while making big decisions.
For example, the design of the award-winning \u2018sunflower\u2019 iMac was conceived when Jobs and Jony Ive walked in Laurene Powell Jobs\u2019 gardens.
\u201cInstead of looking like the old iMac, the thing should look more like the flowers in the garden,\u201d Jobs said .
Apple\u2019s genius co-founder liked his nature analogies. In one of his final public acts, when he proposed Apple\u2019s new headquarters building to Cupertino City Council, Jobs said, „Apple is growing like a weed. It’s clear we need to build a new campus. “
Set in 175-acres, Apple\u2019s new \u2018spaceship\u2019 HQ will hold around 12,000 employees once the move to the new offices is complete.
Moving all these people into the company\u2019s posh new office buildings will take around six months. Work will also continue landscaping and the construction of parkland around the site across summer, the company said today.
\u201cSteve was exhilarated, and inspired, by the California landscape, by its light and its expansiveness. It was his favorite setting for thought. Apple Park captures his spirit uncannily well,\u201d said Laurene Powell Jobs. \u201cHe would have flourished, as the people of Apple surely will, on this luminously designed campus.\u201d
As a zillion drone videos show, the campus\u2019 ring-shaped, 2.8 million-square-foot main construction is wrapped in the world\u2019s largest panels of curved glass.
„It’s pretty cool. “
The curved glass design was itself a Steve Jobs promise.
Way back when he proposed the HQ, back when the site was all abandoned buildings and tarmac, he said:
\u201cThere is not a straight piece of glass in this building, it’s all curved. We used our experience making retail buildings all over the world now, and we know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use. We want to make the glass specifically for this building here. We can make it curve all the way around the building. It’s pretty cool.\u201d
The Steve Jobs Theater is a 20-foot-tall glass cylinder, 165 feet in diameter, supporting a metallic carbon-fiber roof.
Company architects have chosen to put this space on top of a hill at one of the highest points of the park. This means the co-founder\u2019s memorial can see and be seen overlooking meadows and the main building.
\u201cSteve\u2019s vision for Apple stretched far beyond his time with us. He intended Apple Park to be the home of innovation for generations to come,\u201d said Apple CEO, Tim Cook.
\u201cThe workspaces and parklands are designed to inspire our team as well as benefit the environment. We\u2019ve achieved one of the most energy-efficient buildings in the world and the campus will run entirely on renewable energy.\u201d
(It is powered by 17 megawatts of rooftop solar).
Pointing out that the company has attached the same rigor to designing the HQ as the company does to its products, Jobs\u2019 close friend and partner in design, Jony Ive, stressed the advanced nature of the design process.
\u201cConnecting extraordinarily advanced buildings with rolling parkland creates a wonderfully open environment for people to create, collaborate and work together,\u201d he said.
The park will also contain two miles of walking and running paths for employees, plus an orchard, meadow and pond within the ring\u2019s interior grounds.
This means the world will be able to decide if Apple has managed to keep Steve Jobs\u2019 promise to Cupertino City Council, when he said:
„I think we do have a shot at building the best office building in the world. And I really do think architecture students will come here to see this. I think it could be that good. “
I\u2019m guessing developers attending WWDC this year will be among the first members of Apple’s wider public to take a look.<\/p>\n