The San Jose Mercury News reports that California Governor Jerry Brown's office has approved Apple's "Campus 2" project in Cupertino for a streamlined environmental review process. The new designation will not speed up construction on the project, which is scheduled to begin in early 2013, but will simplify the review process over the coming months.
"Apple's state-of-the art campus brings at least $100 million dollars in investment to California and generates no additional greenhouse gas emissions," Brown said in a statement to this newspaper, listing two of the requirements Apple had met to qualify under the law. "On-site fuel cells and 650,000 square feet of solar panels will provide clean, renewable energy for more than 12,000 Apple employees on the new campus."
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Under the "leadership project" designation, any legal challenges to the project review would be fast-tracked through the courts, helping to minimize potential delays as Apple seeks to open the campus in 2015.
Top Rated Comments
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.
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.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.
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.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.
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.
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.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.
(Well, okay, it did in 1976, but it melted before lunchtime that day. And it was a sunny morning.)
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.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.
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?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.
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).
Yeah, keep criticizing a building in a town where you have never ever stepped foot in.Those are just some of the more apparent functional issues with this building.
I've never been to Palookaville, but it probably isn't much different than Cupertino.