Acclaimed architect Norman Foster to build Apple's new campus - Page 2

you mean tofu dogs

Good luck to them. I went to a presentation at the main campus a couple of months ago, and that seemed reasonably nice, but driving around Cupertino and seeing some of the buildings they are using, they really don't seem befitting of such a successful company.

Will the new campus be "Made in China", "Assembled in Cupertino"?

I think they will probably have an underground monorail that connects the two campuses.

If Apple can work in a carbon-neutral manner, I will not complain if other companies copy them.

Huh. So not very knowledgable about architecture or "Bucky Fuller", I guess.

However, were Buckminster Fuller to build a greenhouse, one thing that we might be sure of is that it would be environmentally sustainable.

Since your very next comment complains about lack of environmental ssensitivity, it would appear you're just sort of throwing out random snark because, I dunno, that's all you know how to do?

"Designed by Foster + Partners, Built by Swinerton Incorporated"
or Bechtel Group, or DPR Construction, or similar.

This could be the subject of endless jokes.


Don't feel too badly, that's a pet peeve of mine too. I haven't seen too many architects swinging hammers either.


Fuller wasn't really an architect, he was an industrial designer and all-around theoretician. His one real contribution to the field of architecture was the geodesic dome, which was an outgrowth of his ideas about structure. I heard him lecture a couple of times. It was wild. He was all over the place, nearly impossible to follow. One thing I remember him saying was that architects don't design buildings, bankers design buildings.

Underground tunnels are a great way to keep the world above green and populated with trees and shrubs.

www.boxculvert.com seems to be one way underground tunnels could be constructed and installed in a quick manner speeding up construction.

I think this project sounds great and I am going to have to read me some more information on the car-less city mentioned.

So are you suggesting Apple should have used only an unproven architecture student?

LOL, made my day.

I hope that it turns out better than this:

http://www.fosterandpartners.com/Pro...8/Default.aspx

Right, I wouldn't make any claims for the architectural esthetics of a Fuller designed greenhouse (or its practicality functioning as same), but we can be sure that he would be keenly sensitive to matters of efficiency, energy use and (were he designing things today) what we currently think of as "sustainability" (as per his Wichita House and other 'Dymaxion' designs, crazy ass unlivable tinkerer's pipe-dream though they may otherwise be).

But more generally my point was that "Bucky Fuller designs a greenhouse" is nonsensical in several directions.

Two words: Volcanic Lair

if steve jobs didn't live in california and i'm certain he doesn't want to move, california would be one of the worst places to live. no matter how close it is to silicon valley. a bankrupt state that's choking on pelosi style politicians. not an attractive work environment.

north carolina would have been a lot more friendly and closer to nyc for a little culture.

I did enjoy the presentation by Walt on the original EPCOT concept. I don't know if it would have worked out, but at least he had a visionary concept, and the drive to make it work died with him. The current theme park pales in comparison with the original concept.


It seems deeply ingrained. I recall in a college art history class where a presentation said a certain Pharaoh "built" a certain pyramid. I doubt any of them had handled limestone in any significant capacity or even made a single drawing.

* * *

From the Growing Spacess website:

The Growing Dome Greenhouse is a working model of the wisdom, practicality and well being that is the foundation of a sustainable lifestyle. Developed for the harsh climate of the Rocky Mountains, our Growing Dome greenhousesare available in eight sizes and can produce fresh vegetables, fruits and flowers year round!

Because of its seven unique features, the Growing Dome greenhouse, if heated for tropical plants, uses only 1/3 of the amount of heat needed by a regular greenhouse. As a result, the Growing Dome dramatically reduces our environmental footprint. At the same time, they provide the optimal environment for growing fresh, organic and nutritious vegetables, herbs and fruits throughout the year.

Best comment of 2010?

if you understood design-wise what i was talking about you might get it. i never mentioned sustainability.

So your conception of "having a sense of nature" is simply esthetics?

More like Conceived by Foster + Partners, Designed by Gensler, MEP by WSP Flack + Kurtz... not sure who to pick for Structures.

I'd give Turner a chance at building it too though.

i made an 'esthetic' comment.
but the answer to you is 'no'.

My guess is that the new building will look like a giant-scale scene from the Abbey Road album...

And they say the Washington monument is a giant phallus in D.C.!



Wouldnt this building be more appropriately sited at Cape Canaveral?

109876

I though that was a Faberge Penis...

or, App-henge??

So then I'm not understanding your antipathy. Foster + Partners are pretty well known for green and sustainable building techniques, which is vastly more significant for a "sense of nature" any given opinion about esthetics.

I'm also not sure why you would worry about fitting into "nature" in the first place, since the vast majority of their buildings are in highly urban settings (with a few sited on greensward, itself contrived and artificial).

It's not like this architectural firm has a track record of erecting modernist insults in the middle of wilderness or scenic spots.

Oh, those rrrRussians...



(I'm dating myself, from 1978)

rrrrr....
I see, so you found that button that switches it to power-vibrate mode

i should have said 'sense of surroundings'. 'nature' has caused you too much worry....

Fair enough, those are different things. Still, it's the rare big name architect (or client) that worries overly much about "blending in", preferring bold signature statements. Arguably, this is how the state of architecture is advanced, since if we didn't have some discontinuity with the past as represented by proximate structures, we'd end up with bland pastiche. In fact, we get a lot of bland pastiche as it is in the name of being "contextually sensitive", which is code for "make it look vaguely Beaux Arts or kinda Gothic or a little Victorian."

The emergent architectural language that uses non-linear envelopes coupled to a great deal of systems engineering (everything from passive lighting and climate control to siting to materials to new tech and materials) is, IMO, vastly preferable to the "post-modern" schtick that immediately preceded it.

Steve's original plan was to have the data center in North Carolina look like a giant TimeCapsule.

Pardon my newness, but are you the resident contrarian?

You found the word you were struggling for, which is context. The debate over context is a long-running one in architecture and planning, and we're not going to resolve it here. Suffice to say, the Modernists of the postwar era said to hell with context because to their minds, cities were no good and everything anyone had designed before them was, to use your words, bland pastiche. Entire cities were mowed down in the name of this dogma. Based in no small part on the actual results of this plan in action, the more recent generation of architects and planners has seen that perhaps sacrificing everything we knew about how cities work and they way people relate to urban places was not wrong. The alternative, contextual design, is not necessarily bland pastiche. It is also not Postmodernism, which is a very different animal.

rrrrr -- my nod to Rasputin, and to a song from '78. : )

iCucumber.

I'm not thinking about postwar modernism so much as timid zoning boards and the strong push to keep new structures in harmony with what is imagined to be the prevailing style-- although of course in the average American city the prevailing style is a palimpsest of the last 100 years or so of varying fashion.

What this means in practice, IMO, is a lot of "developer Mediterranean" monstrosities that satisfy neither true respect for context nor any ambition for the interesting or transformative. They do, however, please a certain kind of bureaucrat for whom the urban experience is best understood as a kind of gigantic mall, with Pottery Barn style "classical" facades acting as serviceable architecture manqué.

It's hard to escape thinking of postwar Modernism, as this is the analog to contextual design. Modernism in architecture, in its most basic sense, is the building treated as an object, devoid of context or relationship to anything but itself. In city planning, it's treating everything which came before as wrong-headed and expendable. Modernists were anxious in every respect to wipe the slate clean and start over, and they actually got their way in many places over a long period of time. We are now in the position to fairly judge their success. The reply is a lot more about New Urbanism in planning than Postmodernism in architecture.

Style really has little to nothing do with any of this. Architectural pastiche can be just and noncontextual as Modern architecture. Bland does not inherently fit any better than bold. Clothes do not make the building. As a city planner in my former life, I can tell you that 99% of what came across my counter was dull and unimaginative by intention. As Buckminster Fuller said, bankers design buildings, not architects.

I do think the reactionary style amongst planning and zoning boards is in large part due to the depredations of modernism. After all, if you've seen large swaths or your city transformed into glass wind tunnels, you might develop a soft spot for "nice" architecture, no matter how bland or derivative.

Of course, you have to acknowledge that the real "failure" of modernist architecture was its amenability to cheap and fast construction, serving as legitimatizing cover for countless soulless knockoffs of some actually pretty sterling buildings. Not unlike the dreary mass market "minimal" stuff that took only the simple surfaces of Bauhaus and ignored the careful refinement of detail and execution.

OTOH I see this as an exciting time for architecture, with what to my eye looks like the first persuasive move beyond modernism that's coherent enough to think of as a "movement." I've seen it called "techno baroque", "pile of shapes", and "free-form", but in the right hands Gehry style effusions can be energizing and uplifting, or serene and contemplative. For the latter, look no further than the new DeYoung Museum in SF's Golden Gate Park, a long undulating copper clad building, punctuated by a partially twisted tower. For my money, it's got it all over the Mario Botto designed SF Museum of Modern Art, a po-mo temple of culture that is very clear about it's rigidly enforced hierarchies where the DeYoung is beguilingly casual. There's something about busting up that cube that really seems to invite a different relationship to inhabiting the interior, which is why I like it so much. It goes beyond the latest thing in facades to rethink the whole idea of how we use and interact with made spaces.

We can also hope that the intricacy of fabrication involved will be proof against sail form Targets or shuffled deck banks.

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