July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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The edifice complex is alive and well in Silicon Valley, as Apple’s new solar-powered spaceship campus is expected to cost 66 percent more than initially planned, and Apple’s move-in date has been pushed back a year.

Costs have ballooned since the full plans for Steve Jobs’ anticipated $3 billion futuristic office building were published by Cupertino’s city council, according to a new report from BusinessWeek. And as previously reported, the move-in date has been pushed back again from 2015 to 2016.

This is a project that Apple cannot cancel, for two good reasons, but it is also a project that is a massive problem for the leadership of the Cupertino company.

Apple seems under constant sales, revenue, and market share pressure, which has pushed its share price down hundreds of dollars and its market capitalization down hundreds of billions of dollars, so building a massive and incredibly expensive monument in which to work seems like the wrong focus.

In other words, it has bad optics.

But Apple can’t cancel the project because this is its spiritual leader’s legacy. It’s the building that Steve Jobs helped design and the building he said he hoped architecture students the world over would come to see and learn from. As such, canceling the project would be brand suicide.

And Apple can’t cancel the project because it absolutely needs the space. Head count has grown from just 10,000 in 2002 to over 50,000 in the U.S. alone, and Apple has been leasing buildings and building satellite campuses to house all those workers.

So the company is looking to shave a billion dollars from the cost, BusinessWeek says, by being a little less detail-oriented about the fit and finish of the building, which was to have been built to iPhone-level quality standards.

The question is, does that cut also compromise part of Steve Jobs’ legacy.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Cupertino posted Apple’s newest plans for its massive new campus to the city’s website today.

The project has been delayed due to Apple’s most recent changes making it to the city only last week, two months later than expected. As we reported earlier today, that could push construction back a year — and move-in until 2016 — as the city needs to complete an environmental assessment before approving the plans.

While not much has obviously changed since campus photos came to light, the new plans spell out in detail Apple’s vision for the signature main building, with 2.8 million square feet of office space for 12,000 employees, an on-site restaurant, and separate structures for a 100,000 square foot fitness center and a 1000-person auditorium in yet another 120,000 square foot building.

A second phase of construction will see the building of two office and research facilities, each of about 300,000 square feet, for another 2,200 employees.

Source: City of Cupertino

A map of Apple’s new campus

In total, although Apple is adding about 20 percent more square footage than exists on the former HP campus, Apple’s plans state that “the efficient use of the main site will result in almost tripling the landscaped area,” mostly by replacing parking lots with underground and multi-story parking structures.

The on-site restaurant will consist of a 60,000 square foot facility on the ground level with seating for up to 2,100 employees, plus 20,000 square feet on a mezzanine level to seat 600 more. In addition, Apple’s new campus will incorporate outdoor dining space for yet another 1,750 people.

In addition, Apple is committing to use 100 percent renewable energy for the entire campus, with on-site generation from solar panels and fuel cells, and will provide 300 electric vehicle charging stations, with the capacity to add more over time.

Image credits: Apple/City of Cupertino

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

It’ll be a bit longer until Steve Jobs’ dream Apple campus is complete.

The futuristic spaceship-shaped Cupertino campus, which Jobs proposed last year, likely won’t be completed until 2016, Bloomberg reports. That’s a year beyond the timetable in Apple’s initial plans.

The delay mostly seems to be Apple’s fault: the company updated its proposal with Cupertino just last week, two months later than it initially planned. Now Cupertino may not be able to complete its environmental impact report on the project until June 2013, which means work may not begin until 2014.

“They could conceivably break ground in 2013, but only if everything goes smoothly,” Cupertino City Manager David Brandt told Bloomberg.

It doesn’t look like much has changed with the plans for the new 176-acre campus, where Apple plans to house 14,200 employees. In the latest revision, Apple moved a large auditorium away from a nearby road, and it also proposed a way to finish construction without moving dirt out of the site.

Photo: Foster and Partners

What would a spaceship look like inside if Apple designed it? Glad you asked. Pictures of the company’s new “spaceship” campus were leaked today.

9to5Mac acquired the images from an unnamed source. According to these drawings, the campus will have a walkway looking out to a courtyard inside the circular shaped building, plenty of outdoor congregating space, and a feel almost like an Apple retail store — lots of glass and places to look down onto floors below.

The spaceship campus was originally brought before the Cupertino City Council by Apple’s late chief executive Steve Jobs. The council later posted a number of renderings of the campus on its website in December 2011. These renderings showed that famous engineering firm ARUP, landscape architecture firm Davis Langdon, and London architecture firm Foster + Partners are all working on the project. They are also listed on today’s drawings.

It will be built on grounds that originally owned by HP, and truly does look like a round, hollowed-out spaceship. It will house 33,000 employees over its 2.8 million square feet, 300,000 of which will be dedicated to research favilities alone.

Rumors say the campus may be finished in 2015, and will undoubtedly be a benefit to the Cupertino community in terms of job creation (that’s a whole lot of building to keep up) and other patronage as more Apple employees commute to the city daily.

Check out more images over at 9to5Mac.

Images via 9to5Mac; Top image via Cupertino City Council

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Confirming recent rumors, Apple has sent out press invites for its iPhone 5 event on October 4 at its Cupertino campus.

Surprisingly, Apple is pretty straightforward in the invite regarding what the event is about: “Let’s talk iPhone.” Typically, Apple tends to be more coy about its events, even when it’s plainly obvious what they will be about.

The invite confirms that new Apple CEO Tim Cook will be leading the event, which will begin at 10am PDT. All Things Digital reported last week that Apple was gearing up for an October 4 iPhone 5 event and that Cook would be hosting.

At this point, the iPhone 5 is expected to include a larger screen of around four inches, a dual-core A5 chip, and as we reported yesterday, a powerful virtual assistant. As for other devices, Ars Technica notes that Apple may introduce a white iPod Touch. Previous rumors also pointed to Apple releasing a low-cost — and potentially free with contract — iPhone 4 that will be married to its iCloud service.

As I wrote last week, it’s clear why the iPhone 5 is a big deal, but the event will also mark the first major product announcement for new CEO Cook. While Cook’s business savvy has been proven time and again, he will have to prove with his iPhone 5 presentation that he can also fill Steve Jobs’ role as an Apple product evangelist.

Image via Ars Technica

“There is no chance that we’re saying no,” Wong said. “The Mothership has landed in Cupertino.”

In a press conference yesterday about the proposed campus, Wong discussed growing up with Apple computers. He also noted that his daughter attends the same middle school that Jobs did growing up. He said that Apple didn’t receive any special treatment, and that the city is very accommodating to propositions from every large company contributing significant amounts of sales tax.

Of course, there was little reason to suspect that Apple’s futuristic new building plans would be declined. The new campus design — which can house up to 12,000 employees and will sport its own natural gas power system — looks unlike any other company building I can think of.

Jobs is aiming to build the new cult center campus at a former Hewlett-Packard property, TechCrunch reports. The single building will be able to house up to 12,000 employees — Apple’s current campus at 1 Infinite Loop only fits around 2,800 people. The new campus will also bring Apple’s other 6,700 employees in Cupertino, who are currently working out of rented locations, together with the rest of the company.

As the concept image above shows, Jobs is proposing a circular building with a courtyard in the center. “There’s not a single straight piece of glass in this building,” Jobs says. Parking will be housed underground so as not to detract from the new campus’s futuristic design. The building will also sport a natural gas-powered energy center as its main power source (though it can still feed off of the grid as a backup).