New Apple Campus Will Be Sci-Fi Certified - The UpStream

New Apple Campus Will Be Sci-Fi Certified

posted Sunday Jun 12, 2011 by Jon Wurm

New Apple Campus Will Be Sci-Fi Certified

In 2006 Apple acquired 50 acres of land with something in mind and last November they added the 98 acre former HP Campus to their inventory. Just recently, on June 7th, we found out what all the land was for in a presentation that the Steve Jobs gave to the Cupertino City Council about a new Apple campus.

Apple has experienced some steep growth and the current facilities at 1 Infinite Loop are starting to get a little cramped. In fact, the real problem Apple is running into is that they have to keep buying and renting places further and further away from the campus to accommodate its students and what not. The new campus has been designed to compliment the existing one and not act as a replacement. Hit the break to find out what the Steve Jobs has planned for the new campus.

The architecture of the building is quite unique and takes the old 'mothership' epithet to new levels with its circular shape and open space in the center of the structure. For sure it resembles what I imagine the first colony on Mars to look like but the interesting things don't stop with the building itself. Most of the land is actually a parking lot which Jobs wants to move underground. At the current campus there is around 9,800 parking spaces on the surface and with the new campus there would only be 1,200 above ground, a decrease of 90%. All of the rest would be located in one 4 story parking garage.

The actual usable space of the building increases to 3.1 million square feet from 2.6 million for the current campus. They even intend to make the building footprint smaller by .4 million square feet to 1 million for the new campus. This would open up more area for landscaping as Jobs indicated he would make 80% of total land area available for that purpose. Essentially, landscaping would increase from 1.7 million square feet now to 5.9 million which is a hefty 350% increase.

Something else worthy of noting is that Apple intends to power it with their own natural gas/alternative fuel sources and only use the city power grid as a back-up source. When it's all said and done Jobs believes the campus will be able to compensate about 13,000 more people. The city counsel seems to be on board with this so it seems likely the new campus will become a reality in the near future.

The new plans for the campus actually seem to have the best interests of its occupants and the city in mind. It may be eccentric but Apple has the cash and the desire to make it happen. While I'm traditionally not a fan, in this case I would say more power to them.

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