Apple's new HQ

[Paul Ringstrom]

aka iSpaceship, said to be designed by Norman Foster + Partners. No other pix on F+P website.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/blogs/press-h ... 49.html?dr

I hope all the employees are given rollerblades to get from one end to the other.

[jim]

I had a commission from Steve Jobs in the early 1980s to do site planning for the proposed Apple world headquarters on land they had bought in the oak woodland hillside above the Coyote Valley, south of San Jose. In those days he was enamored with the red sandstone and red clay tile roofs of Stanford University. The project got embroiled in some bad planning and zoning for the city of San Jose by a local civil engineering firm, and various landowners in the area each brought in their competing design teams. Nothing ever came of any of it. Half a dozen different plans for the surrounding lands were done subsequently, and today the land remains greenfields as it was thirty years ago. I do remember spending my 40th birthday in a planning and zoning hearing with Steve.

[Wrightgeek]

jim-

What an interesting story. Do you ever find yourself thinking, I wonder would have happened if...?

[Tom]

The aerials of the project remind me immediately of Broadacre.

[pharding]

They remind me of a spaceship that landed in a pristine meadow.

[outside in]

Please keep in mind that this is the same guy that bought an historical 1920's mission style house in Palo Alto on 2 acres and then tore it down because "the rehabilitation costs were excessive"...... he may make good computers, but architecture is a different matter.

[Tom]

The meadow is the design. It is not already there. The design is not only platonic ring it is also the meadow.

[pharding]

I really like the Apple Showrooms especially the Manhattan Showroom below grade solution with the glass cube above grade. Their existing headquarters is a fine building.

[Tom]

The only Apple store I've ever seen is in a mall in Indianapolis ... and it was very cool.