Apple Campus 2 Qualifies for Expedited Environmental Review

Unless the campus has underground tunnels criss-crossing from one end to the other... it's going to be a pain to go from one end to the other.

Or they can, you know, go outside and walk across the gigantic park in the middle...

You cut through the courtyard....

People who do not live in the SF Bay Area have a hard time understanding you can move freely outdoors with not much more than a light coat and occasional umbrella 355 days of the year. :)

edit: hilarious a statement of fact about weather in Cupertino gets me a vote down.

I hope this means more Apple products :D :apple:

This building is going to be awesome!

Are we absolutely certain they don't have a particle accelerator in the plans somewhere? ;)

Perhaps they'll have a monorail inside for zippy transport around the building?[COLOR="#808080"]

Steve jobs was really big into taking walks to discuss things. Maybe his plan was for everyone to do a lot more walking. He designed the Pixar head quarters to encourage more random encounters with other other people .

Unless the campus has underground tunnels criss-crossing from one end to the other... it's going to be a pain to go from one end to the other.

they should invest that money and bail out California from going bankrupt lol

They are already one of the largest tax payers in the state.

Here we ******** go. AGAIN.

Fine.

Pretty much everything, from what I have seen thus far. It seems clear that the central organizing principle here is the circular plan. It's the kind of sexy form that Steve loved in consumer products, but plan abstraction is not necessarily a good place to start with architecture.

Several posters here have identified the most obvious issue, which is the vast scale of the building and the problems inherent with traveling from one side of the building to the other. Maybe Steve is having a conversation with God at this very moment and has persuaded Him to make rain fall less often over Cupertino, but failing intervention from the Almighty, employees in this building are going to be taking a lot of long hikes.

Probably underground radial tunnels. Not to mention that walking around in NorCal is pretty fine about 300 days of the year. The other sixty days? Well, it sucks, because there's this wet stuff falling out of the sky. It's not like it snows on the valley floor in Cupertino.

(Well, okay, it did in 1976, but it melted before lunchtime that day. And it was a sunny morning.)

Second, the circular plan means that the building will be essentially devoid of the kinds of visual cues that we use to know where we are. Every angle of the building will look the same, at least externally. Internally I'd expect much the same problem to occur. This building is probably going to be very disorienting.

Not much different than a square or any other shaped building. The various "zones" of the building could be color-coded (like parking garages). Also, the light from the windows will probably give people a clue to where they are in the building.

Third, the plan dictated the complete isolation of this building from the surrounding grid. It's a single, gigantic segregated land use requiring everyone who wants to do anything but work or eat at the company cafeteria to get into their car and drive somewhere else. A less dogmatic approach to architectural objectification would have accommodated a building more integrated into the place where it exists and have been more functional in that respect as well.

Christ, we are talking about Cupertino. There's no place to GO in Cupertino. There's no downtown area. Where are you gonna go? BJ's? Paul and Eddie's? The Target on Stevens Creek Boulevard? SQ Noodle? Vivi's? Yamagami's Nursery?

The two most crowded places at lunchtime on a weekday are the main post office and the Whole Foods Market express checkout lines.

Oh yeah, I guess you've never been to Cupertino. In that case, stop talking about it like you know the place.

Cupertino is a bunch of office complexes. The rest of it is nondescript residential areas that happen to feed some of the South Bay's best public school districts. Other than that, Cupertino is entirely nondescript.

Campus 2 has a shuttle service area for commuting to other complexes (like 1 Infinite Loop).

Those are just some of the more apparent functional issues with this building.

Yeah, keep criticizing a building in a town where you have never ever stepped foot in.

I've never been to Palookaville, but it probably isn't much different than Cupertino.

Several posters here have identified the most obvious issue, which is the vast scale of the building and the problems inherent with traveling from one side of the building to the other.

HP employees were often seen taking a quick walk around the entire current building complex after lunch. It's not that big, and the round building will be smaller in total circumference.

Third, the plan dictated the complete isolation of this building from the surrounding grid. It's a single, gigantic segregated land use requiring everyone who wants to do anything but work or eat at the company cafeteria to get into their car and drive somewhere else.

This site is right across the street from a large Asian market complex and several restaurants, and about 4 blocks walk from a medium size mall with department stores, theaters and restaurants. Maybe 4 blocks walk from a park and community garden. There were HP employees who could walk to work from the suburban neighborhoods across the street.