It takes an average adult in good health about four minutes to leisurely walk one-quarter mile, which seems to be the maximum distance between the building's inside-circle entrances. Supposing one has a meeting on the far side, I'd guess that a 10-minute walk from chair to chair would be the most someone has to spend being ambulatory.
And those staring at a computer monitor all day could use the exercise.
As for the criticism about the new campus not helping liberate Cupertino from the automobile paradigm... it's not a big stretch to one day see public transit be efficiently quick from all corners of the Bay Area to the campus, and the parking garage get repurposed after a decade or two. (I bet stagnant Bay Area transit projects get fast-tracked without fuss once gasoline hits $10 a gallon. Hey, it's already at four bucks now...)
Respect for the environment is a "fundamental American value"?
Yep, we have more respect and protections for the environment than ~80% of nations, and we led the way (see my other posting about USA being first in most everything). So if fundamental mean stuff that Americans have believed in for most of our history, yes.
It's a long, long list. The writing on the subject is encyclopedic. In short, the suburbs are parasitic, isolating, wasteful, a major factor in our deadly sedentary lifestyle, and of course ugly, cheap, and ephemeral. Above all, a suburban life is a disposable life.
His comparison to the Pentagon is particularly apt ? a huge, hollow structure surrounded by the clogged highways it created, like an animal fouling its own nest. Given the vast range of choices available to Apple, a 1950's "Lost in Space" reference is both disappointing and a tragic waste of an opportunity.
Quite a bit. It's morbid, and coming from what regards itself as the single most innovative institution on the planet, bizarrely hypocritical. If nothing else, whoever decided everyone should work in the Jupiter II forgot to "think different."
Hawthorne is right to expose the oxymoron of a "green" building that will require hundreds of thousands of car trips per year. It's rather like they're putting solar panels on a coal-fired power plant. Any resource-responsible aspects of the campus will be significantly offset by the negative behavior required anyone who needs or wants to go there. "Green" is about long-term impact, not light bulbs.
Gee, uh, I dunno? Let's ask go ask the nearest kindergarten class and time how many seconds it takes for the whole room to shout "In the city!"
I'm 52, have lived in DC, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle and have never owned a car or in any way missed having one. I've much of my waking life in offices, and have yet to drive to work. It's easy, safe, and environmentally sound. Commuting is stupid, wasteful, and destructive. Cars are for fat lazy chumps who buy crap in strip malls.
By the way, the argument to tradition is a logical fallacy. "We've always done it that way" has been used to support everything from toxic waste dumps to slavery.
Guess what, dude? That fact that many people do or don't want do a thing says nothing about the logic, responsibility, destructiveness, or sanity of the behavior. Like your argument to tradition above, the argument ad populum is a logical fallacy generally covered in high school. In practice, what most people want almost always involves short-term pleasure achieved at the expense of long-term sanity.
"Pastoral capitalism" is when the eloi surround themselves with trees, fields, ponds, and espresso machines while the underage morlocks who build the products live, sleep, eat, and work 14 hour days as indentured servants in a factory they can never leave.
7. This was an interesting phrase: "Apple's campus... keeps itself aloof from the world around it to a degree that is unusual even in a part of California dominated by office parks." So, Chris, what, you're a conformist then? Or maybe a communist? Maybe Apple wants to stay a bit detached from the noise, congestion and commotion going on around them, so they can focus on their work in a quiet, peaceful environment. Once again you paint this as a negative. What the heck is wrong with it?
Isolation is socially destructive and intellectually stifling. Healthy people and organizations mingle. Cults, however, keep their members in cages to prevent them from being contaminated by unbelievers.
The reason America's greatest scientific resource is its 50 or so top research universities has nothing to do with ivy and a lot to do with throwing a lot of people from different disciplines doing a huge number of different things in a relatively confined area. In contrast, Apple's monolithic new environment will resemble a mega-church far more than a campus.
You completely missed the point. The questions were rhetorical. So let me rephrase and respond:
1. There is nothing wrong with a suburban setting. People like them, they're not going away, despite your fantasies.
2. There's nothing wrong with the Pentagon. I've lived in DC (more on that later). There are huge freeways because of the population, not the building. If the Apple campus was a pyramid, this writer would have looked to Egypt and said "see, it's old-fashioned."
3. Not all '70's architecture was "morbid" as you state (how does that word even apply?). I see nothing wrong with it. Some 60-70's architecture was plain ugly indeed, but the design of the new Apple campus is definitely not.
4. Hawthorne is moronic, and there is nothing to "expose". So, how do you suppose people get around in Cupertino? It is not NYC. People are going to be driving whether Apple is there or not. Do you expect the world to urbanize? Again, fantasy. It's not going to happen. Get used to it.
5. There may be what, 2 or 3 cities in the entire country where you can get around without a car... Ah, but when was the last time you were in NYC? The last time I was there (in my car) I spent an hour getting through the traffic jam at the holland tunnel, and then stuck for 2 hours at an I-278 interchange on Long Island trying to get out. So much for "no cars" in big cities. I don't believe you've lived in the places you state. Since I actually have lived in DC and Seattle, I can tell you for certain, you do need a car. Sorry. Again, your fantasies are interfering with reality.
6. Nobody made an 'argument ad populum'. There is a distinction between what people 'believe' and what reality is. If anyone is deluded, it would seem to be Hawthorne, and you.
7. Nonsense. You're really grabbing at straws. Isolationist? Cults? Maybe you should pull yourself out of a noisy, polluted, congested urban environment long enough to see the therapeutic results of quiet, peaceful surroundings. Experience the spiritual and intellectual benefits when your brain doesn't have to constantly work to block out all the commotion.
It's a long, long list. The writing on the subject is encyclopedic. In short, the suburbs are parasitic, isolating, wasteful, a major factor in our deadly sedentary lifestyle, and of course ugly, cheap, and ephemeral. Above all, a suburban life is a disposable life.
And the writings on why people prefer the suburbs is encyclopedic. Big Fkg Deal. Who cares what someone else thinks? Different strokes for different folks. I think your life sucks, you think the reverse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rbryanh
I'm 52, have lived in DC, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle and have never owned a car or in any way missed having one. I've much of my waking life in offices, and have yet to drive to work. It's easy, safe, and environmentally sound. Commuting is stupid, wasteful, and destructive. Cars are for fat lazy chumps who buy crap in strip malls.
Spoken like a selfish, single dude who never grew up, got married and had kids. If you had, you wouldn't be so quick to make such stupid, ignorant comments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rbryanh
Isolation is socially destructive and intellectually stifling. Healthy people and organizations mingle.
Isolation can happen anywhere. It sounds like you "isolate" yourself among like-minded, city-dwelling folks like yourself, ridiculing anyone with different opinions about life values. Myself, I have a car, and drive all around my city, spending time with people from literally all walks of life and a wide variety of opinions. Of course it helps to have kids (in public schools) to understand this. The world does not revolve around you and your needs.
It's not about "the feeling of a metropolitan realm", but rather limitations of space, resources, transit, and environmental concerns that lead the architectural community to largely favor metropolitan development.
In addition to that, culture and diversity are typically scarce in suburban areas relative to a city. It's considered to be a shame when company keeps all these talented, wealthy, and well-educated people cooped-up within the confines of a suburban setting, rather than mixed into a larger group that would greatly benefit from the presence of the type of people that work for a company like Apple.
While your comments are right in line with the status quo for urban architecture, I think you need to stop and "Think Different" for a moment. There are other ways to create urban environments that are advantageous. If you have ever been to So-Cal you might understand that the green space is more likely to attract people to take a break or two from the office and thus mix into the larger metropolitan environment. It will also attract employees of other businesses towards the campus for more mixing.
Yep, we have more respect and protections for the environment than ~80% of nations, and we led the way (see my other posting about USA being first in most everything). So if fundamental mean stuff that Americans have believed in for most of our history, yes.
You should probably be quiet now. You are living in some sort of glorious history which does not reflect current US policy or reality.
Of course the building should be away from the public to just walk up to. Do you think your average fat beer belly american with a fanny pack and sweat pants should be able to walk up tho the window where people are working?
The building is so huge the circular feeling of the walls will not be noticed I'm sure. There will be plenty of room for right angles within the building
The argument that it is reliant on cars also seems like a throw away comment. A square building would still be dependent on cars.
Finally, comparing it to designs of the 60's is a compliment if you ask me.
You've told us what shouldn't be done, pretty much anything they have planned now. Tell us what you would do specifically as far as location, shape, size, transportation etc. The devil is in the details.
He can't. He's part of the establishment that is blind to the fact that building a high density workplace in the middle of that suburban sprawl actually starts to reverse the trend of the purely suburban bedroom community.
The arguments made for urbanization ignore the living arrangement of the existing employees, many of whom already bike to work from the surrounding community. Those living out of bicycle distance are going to drive anyway, not because of where the building is but because of where they chose to live. Locating closer to the freeway actually will reduce the overall environmental impact of the longer distance drivers because they will not need to travel and make traffic on as many surface streets, but can shunt quickly into the garage. Slightly creative working hours can do wonders for managing traffic in and out of a facility like this, where smaller, dispersed, facilities won't feel the need and so add greatly to general surface street traffic.
Arguing a building is not green because it requires workers to get there is a bit overly dramatic and self-serving. Why aren't there calls for Cupertino and surrounding communities to use the additional property tax revenues towards something constructive like mass transit? This would be much more effective and will motivate future developments in the area to take advantage as well. This would further confound the anti-suburbanites though, because it again fails to demonize land that was considered subject to sprawl.
A question to all those non-sprawl proponents out there, where do we put all the people? In my lifetime the population of the US has gone from under 200 million to over 300 million, an over 50% increase. Sprawl isn't some artificial fleeing of the cities, it is a forced thing when the core cities are essentially built out and there is resistance to high density vertical development away from the city center. All the good intention in the world to concentrate population cannot win a nimby CEQA lawsuit against anything over three stories high, thus low density is a population enforced constraint despite all the architectural and psychological theory that says it is better to be denser in places.
Maybe the self-appointed architectural highbrow crowd needs to think about the real world and how to work with it when there is a wonderful opportunity to do so, rather than try to tear down an idea just because it doesn't fit with their chosen theoretical best choice.
If it weren't for "liberals" there would be no Apple. For an example of "conservative" business thinking, look at Microsoft and Dell.
Microsoft is anything BUT conservative when you look at who and what they donate to!
Dell is typically conservative, and they appear to be quite good at what they decided to do. Boring? Maybe. But they have satisfied customers and black ink on their balance sheet.
I used to work in IBM's Watson Research Center building in Yorktown Heights, NY. That building is also circular, or rather an arc of a circle. It's quite a lot like a section cut out of Apple's spaceship.
I loved the Watson Research building. Walking along the curved halls next to the outside glass somehow felt like taking a promenade outdoors, I guess because when you look ahead of you you're looking through the glass rather than looking down the hall.
Within the offices you couldn't tell the building was curved.
One problem with the Watson Research building was that the convex curvature of the glass on the outside created a strong pressure differential between inside and outside when there was a breeze (by the Bernoulli effect). It sometimes made opening doors to the outside difficult. Presumably Apple will anticipate that.
While I?m far from an expert on the subject I?ve read a little about designing/structuring spaces to enhance particular ways humans interact with the environment.
The comment that this campus is not well integrated within the rest of the city is a valid point, but in all fairness which company really does that with their HQ now that secrecy is paramount to maintaining a competitive advantage?
The design is not bad it?s just emphasising internal rather than external collaboration. The low profile encourages people to walk between floors and office spaces rather than take elevators. And the circular shape encourages outdoor excursions by making them the shortest route between any two points.
The all glass exterior makes this less imposing. Much like Apple products, it doesn?t pretend to ?fit? into the existing landscape, but rather ?invite? you into a new one.
Your comment paints the picture of the new campus very well. It would be interesting to see the elephant trails in the center after a few months.
According to an AI article from three days ago "Apple has detailed plans to build a massive parking garage along the 280 freeway, although it's not clear if much of the structure would even be visible from the highway. San Francisco Chronicle architecture columnist John King described the structure in noting that "the parking garage would signal Apple's presence to I-280 commuters with a freeway-friendly sweep."
The new garage would be four stories and 1,440 feet (about 440 meters) in length, with spaces for 4,300 cars. That's 1,715 spaces larger than San Francisco's largest parking structure, the Fifth and Mission garage adjacent to Moscone West, where Apple holds its Worldwide Developer Conference each summer.
According to an AI article from three days ago "Apple has detailed plans to build a massive parking garage along the 280 freeway, although it's not clear if much of the structure would even be visible from the highway. San Francisco Chronicle architecture columnist John King described the structure in noting that "the parking garage would signal Apple's presence to I-280 commuters with a freeway-friendly sweep."
The new garage would be four stories and 1,440 feet (about 440 meters) in length, with spaces for 4,300 cars. That's 1,715 spaces larger than San Francisco's largest parking structure, the Fifth and Mission garage adjacent to Moscone West, where Apple holds its Worldwide Developer Conference each summer.
It's interesting in a totally laughable sort of way how these boards have developed a corp of instant but otherwise deeply committed architecture and city planning experts. How many of them, I wonder, have ever taken an interest in architecture or city planning before? My guess is approximately zero. And yet these instant experts know to the core of their beings that the new Apple campus is a great exercise in architecture and planning and nothing else could possibly be better. I wonder how many of them had even heard of Christopher Hawthorne before this article was posted here, let alone read his columns for years. My guess is approximately zero. And yet, they are convinced to within a millimeter of their lives that Hawthorne is a know-nothing hack. Their confidence and certainty about subjects and people they know nothing whatsoever about is almost inspirational.
Accordingly, I have decided to take up neurosurgery. I have heard of it, which should be enough. More than enough, given what I've read here.
The best theory stays within the bounds of reality!
Ah, but there is where you fail to understand the critic or theorist, as they are basically cut from the same cloth. The "validity" of a theory is inversely proportional to it's grasp of what most folks would call "reality". Mind you, I'm not talking (really) about the so called hard sciences where we've invented the scientific method to try and tie theory to reality a bit closer. I'm talking about the arts and "softer" (hate that word) sciences where theories are only vaguely testable. Mainly because it's impossible to isolate all the variables. Economics, architecture, art, politics, etc.
In these areas, the less in touch with "reality" the better the theory must be. How can this be? Well, the logic goes like this: The reality of whatever the situation is is dirty, messy, and broken (economy, urban areas, government, etc). Any theory that actually deals with this reality will also, by association, wind up dirty, messy, and broken. To have a clean, workable, and "correct" theory, you must perforce remove your thinking "beyond" the broken reality to the plane of ideals where properly scholastic discussion can result in refining the ideas into something purer.
The critic is not concerned with plebeian concerns like what city the building is in, blah, blah, blah. The new campus does not fit well into the architectural theory of the "ideal" space. You could say that the critic is on crack, out of touch with reality, etc. But think about this. If no one has delineated what the "ideal" should be, how can we work towards that and away for the dirty, messy, and broken reality we currently have?
It's interesting in a totally laughable sort of way how these boards have developed a corp of instant but otherwise deeply committed architecture and city planning experts. How many of them, I wonder, have ever taken an interest in architecture or city planning before? My guess is approximately zero. And yet these instant experts know to the core of their beings that the new Apple campus is a great exercise in architecture and planning and nothing else could possibly be better. I wonder how many of them had even heard of Christopher Hawthorne before this article was posted here, let alone read his columns for years. My guess is approximately zero. And yet, they are convinced to within a millimeter of their lives that Hawthorne is a know-nothing hack. Their confidence and certainty about subjects and people they know nothing whatsoever about is almost inspirational.
Accordingly, I have decided to take up neurosurgery. I have heard of it, which should be enough. More than enough, given what I've read here.
I read the whole article and I thought it was a bit of hackery. This in no way qualifies you to be a neurosurgeon.
It's interesting in a totally laughable sort of way how these boards have developed a corp of instant but otherwise deeply committed architecture and city planning experts. How many of them, I wonder, have ever taken an interest in architecture or city planning before? My guess is approximately zero. And yet these instant experts know to the core of their beings that the new Apple campus is a great exercise in architecture and planning and nothing else could possibly be better. I wonder how many of them had even heard of Christopher Hawthorne before this article was posted here, let alone read his columns for years. My guess is approximately zero. And yet, they are convinced to within a millimeter of their lives that Hawthorne is a know-nothing hack. Their confidence and certainty about subjects and people they know nothing whatsoever about is almost inspirational.
Accordingly, I have decided to take up neurosurgery. I have heard of it, which should be enough. More than enough, given what I've read here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Doctor David
I read the whole article and I thought it was a bit of hackery. This in no way qualifies you to be a neurosurgeon.
I read it too. At the risk of being seen as self-aggrandizing here is the link to my previous post which addressed this:
It's interesting in a totally laughable sort of way how these boards have developed a corp of instant but otherwise deeply committed architecture and city planning experts. How many of them, I wonder, have ever taken an interest in architecture or city planning before? My guess is approximately zero. And yet these instant experts know to the core of their beings that the new Apple campus is a great exercise in architecture and planning and nothing else could possibly be better. I wonder how many of them had even heard of Christopher Hawthorne before this article was posted here, let alone read his columns for years. My guess is approximately zero. And yet, they are convinced to within a millimeter of their lives that Hawthorne is a know-nothing hack. Their confidence and certainty about subjects and people they know nothing whatsoever about is almost inspirational.
Accordingly, I have decided to take up neurosurgery. I have heard of it, which should be enough. More than enough, given what I've read here.
I visit and read comments on architectural websites (Architectural Record). Many remarks here show more insight.
Comments
to go from north to south you seed a Segway.
It takes an average adult in good health about four minutes to leisurely walk one-quarter mile, which seems to be the maximum distance between the building's inside-circle entrances. Supposing one has a meeting on the far side, I'd guess that a 10-minute walk from chair to chair would be the most someone has to spend being ambulatory.
And those staring at a computer monitor all day could use the exercise.
As for the criticism about the new campus not helping liberate Cupertino from the automobile paradigm... it's not a big stretch to one day see public transit be efficiently quick from all corners of the Bay Area to the campus, and the parking garage get repurposed after a decade or two. (I bet stagnant Bay Area transit projects get fast-tracked without fuss once gasoline hits $10 a gallon. Hey, it's already at four bucks now...)
Respect for the environment is a "fundamental American value"?
Yep, we have more respect and protections for the environment than ~80% of nations, and we led the way (see my other posting about USA being first in most everything). So if fundamental mean stuff that Americans have believed in for most of our history, yes.
It's a long, long list. The writing on the subject is encyclopedic. In short, the suburbs are parasitic, isolating, wasteful, a major factor in our deadly sedentary lifestyle, and of course ugly, cheap, and ephemeral. Above all, a suburban life is a disposable life.
His comparison to the Pentagon is particularly apt ? a huge, hollow structure surrounded by the clogged highways it created, like an animal fouling its own nest. Given the vast range of choices available to Apple, a 1950's "Lost in Space" reference is both disappointing and a tragic waste of an opportunity.
Quite a bit. It's morbid, and coming from what regards itself as the single most innovative institution on the planet, bizarrely hypocritical. If nothing else, whoever decided everyone should work in the Jupiter II forgot to "think different."
Hawthorne is right to expose the oxymoron of a "green" building that will require hundreds of thousands of car trips per year. It's rather like they're putting solar panels on a coal-fired power plant. Any resource-responsible aspects of the campus will be significantly offset by the negative behavior required anyone who needs or wants to go there. "Green" is about long-term impact, not light bulbs.
Gee, uh, I dunno? Let's ask go ask the nearest kindergarten class and time how many seconds it takes for the whole room to shout "In the city!"
I'm 52, have lived in DC, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle and have never owned a car or in any way missed having one. I've much of my waking life in offices, and have yet to drive to work. It's easy, safe, and environmentally sound. Commuting is stupid, wasteful, and destructive. Cars are for fat lazy chumps who buy crap in strip malls.
By the way, the argument to tradition is a logical fallacy. "We've always done it that way" has been used to support everything from toxic waste dumps to slavery.
Guess what, dude? That fact that many people do or don't want do a thing says nothing about the logic, responsibility, destructiveness, or sanity of the behavior. Like your argument to tradition above, the argument ad populum is a logical fallacy generally covered in high school. In practice, what most people want almost always involves short-term pleasure achieved at the expense of long-term sanity.
"Pastoral capitalism" is when the eloi surround themselves with trees, fields, ponds, and espresso machines while the underage morlocks who build the products live, sleep, eat, and work 14 hour days as indentured servants in a factory they can never leave.
7. This was an interesting phrase: "Apple's campus... keeps itself aloof from the world around it to a degree that is unusual even in a part of California dominated by office parks." So, Chris, what, you're a conformist then? Or maybe a communist? Maybe Apple wants to stay a bit detached from the noise, congestion and commotion going on around them, so they can focus on their work in a quiet, peaceful environment. Once again you paint this as a negative. What the heck is wrong with it?
Isolation is socially destructive and intellectually stifling. Healthy people and organizations mingle. Cults, however, keep their members in cages to prevent them from being contaminated by unbelievers.
The reason America's greatest scientific resource is its 50 or so top research universities has nothing to do with ivy and a lot to do with throwing a lot of people from different disciplines doing a huge number of different things in a relatively confined area. In contrast, Apple's monolithic new environment will resemble a mega-church far more than a campus.
You completely missed the point. The questions were rhetorical. So let me rephrase and respond:
1. There is nothing wrong with a suburban setting. People like them, they're not going away, despite your fantasies.
2. There's nothing wrong with the Pentagon. I've lived in DC (more on that later). There are huge freeways because of the population, not the building. If the Apple campus was a pyramid, this writer would have looked to Egypt and said "see, it's old-fashioned."
3. Not all '70's architecture was "morbid" as you state (how does that word even apply?). I see nothing wrong with it. Some 60-70's architecture was plain ugly indeed, but the design of the new Apple campus is definitely not.
4. Hawthorne is moronic, and there is nothing to "expose". So, how do you suppose people get around in Cupertino? It is not NYC. People are going to be driving whether Apple is there or not. Do you expect the world to urbanize? Again, fantasy. It's not going to happen. Get used to it.
5. There may be what, 2 or 3 cities in the entire country where you can get around without a car... Ah, but when was the last time you were in NYC? The last time I was there (in my car) I spent an hour getting through the traffic jam at the holland tunnel, and then stuck for 2 hours at an I-278 interchange on Long Island trying to get out. So much for "no cars" in big cities. I don't believe you've lived in the places you state. Since I actually have lived in DC and Seattle, I can tell you for certain, you do need a car. Sorry. Again, your fantasies are interfering with reality.
6. Nobody made an 'argument ad populum'. There is a distinction between what people 'believe' and what reality is. If anyone is deluded, it would seem to be Hawthorne, and you.
7. Nonsense. You're really grabbing at straws. Isolationist? Cults? Maybe you should pull yourself out of a noisy, polluted, congested urban environment long enough to see the therapeutic results of quiet, peaceful surroundings. Experience the spiritual and intellectual benefits when your brain doesn't have to constantly work to block out all the commotion.
It's a long, long list. The writing on the subject is encyclopedic. In short, the suburbs are parasitic, isolating, wasteful, a major factor in our deadly sedentary lifestyle, and of course ugly, cheap, and ephemeral. Above all, a suburban life is a disposable life.
And the writings on why people prefer the suburbs is encyclopedic. Big Fkg Deal. Who cares what someone else thinks? Different strokes for different folks. I think your life sucks, you think the reverse.
I'm 52, have lived in DC, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle and have never owned a car or in any way missed having one. I've much of my waking life in offices, and have yet to drive to work. It's easy, safe, and environmentally sound. Commuting is stupid, wasteful, and destructive. Cars are for fat lazy chumps who buy crap in strip malls.
Spoken like a selfish, single dude who never grew up, got married and had kids. If you had, you wouldn't be so quick to make such stupid, ignorant comments.
Isolation is socially destructive and intellectually stifling. Healthy people and organizations mingle.
Isolation can happen anywhere. It sounds like you "isolate" yourself among like-minded, city-dwelling folks like yourself, ridiculing anyone with different opinions about life values. Myself, I have a car, and drive all around my city, spending time with people from literally all walks of life and a wide variety of opinions. Of course it helps to have kids (in public schools) to understand this. The world does not revolve around you and your needs.
It's not about "the feeling of a metropolitan realm", but rather limitations of space, resources, transit, and environmental concerns that lead the architectural community to largely favor metropolitan development.
In addition to that, culture and diversity are typically scarce in suburban areas relative to a city. It's considered to be a shame when company keeps all these talented, wealthy, and well-educated people cooped-up within the confines of a suburban setting, rather than mixed into a larger group that would greatly benefit from the presence of the type of people that work for a company like Apple.
While your comments are right in line with the status quo for urban architecture, I think you need to stop and "Think Different" for a moment. There are other ways to create urban environments that are advantageous. If you have ever been to So-Cal you might understand that the green space is more likely to attract people to take a break or two from the office and thus mix into the larger metropolitan environment. It will also attract employees of other businesses towards the campus for more mixing.
Yep, we have more respect and protections for the environment than ~80% of nations, and we led the way (see my other posting about USA being first in most everything). So if fundamental mean stuff that Americans have believed in for most of our history, yes.
You should probably be quiet now. You are living in some sort of glorious history which does not reflect current US policy or reality.
Of course the building should be away from the public to just walk up to. Do you think your average fat beer belly american with a fanny pack and sweat pants should be able to walk up tho the window where people are working?
The building is so huge the circular feeling of the walls will not be noticed I'm sure. There will be plenty of room for right angles within the building
The argument that it is reliant on cars also seems like a throw away comment. A square building would still be dependent on cars.
Finally, comparing it to designs of the 60's is a compliment if you ask me.
You've told us what shouldn't be done, pretty much anything they have planned now. Tell us what you would do specifically as far as location, shape, size, transportation etc. The devil is in the details.
He can't. He's part of the establishment that is blind to the fact that building a high density workplace in the middle of that suburban sprawl actually starts to reverse the trend of the purely suburban bedroom community.
The arguments made for urbanization ignore the living arrangement of the existing employees, many of whom already bike to work from the surrounding community. Those living out of bicycle distance are going to drive anyway, not because of where the building is but because of where they chose to live. Locating closer to the freeway actually will reduce the overall environmental impact of the longer distance drivers because they will not need to travel and make traffic on as many surface streets, but can shunt quickly into the garage. Slightly creative working hours can do wonders for managing traffic in and out of a facility like this, where smaller, dispersed, facilities won't feel the need and so add greatly to general surface street traffic.
Arguing a building is not green because it requires workers to get there is a bit overly dramatic and self-serving. Why aren't there calls for Cupertino and surrounding communities to use the additional property tax revenues towards something constructive like mass transit? This would be much more effective and will motivate future developments in the area to take advantage as well. This would further confound the anti-suburbanites though, because it again fails to demonize land that was considered subject to sprawl.
A question to all those non-sprawl proponents out there, where do we put all the people? In my lifetime the population of the US has gone from under 200 million to over 300 million, an over 50% increase. Sprawl isn't some artificial fleeing of the cities, it is a forced thing when the core cities are essentially built out and there is resistance to high density vertical development away from the city center. All the good intention in the world to concentrate population cannot win a nimby CEQA lawsuit against anything over three stories high, thus low density is a population enforced constraint despite all the architectural and psychological theory that says it is better to be denser in places.
Maybe the self-appointed architectural highbrow crowd needs to think about the real world and how to work with it when there is a wonderful opportunity to do so, rather than try to tear down an idea just because it doesn't fit with their chosen theoretical best choice.
If it weren't for "liberals" there would be no Apple. For an example of "conservative" business thinking, look at Microsoft and Dell.
Microsoft is anything BUT conservative when you look at who and what they donate to!
Dell is typically conservative, and they appear to be quite good at what they decided to do. Boring? Maybe. But they have satisfied customers and black ink on their balance sheet.
I loved the Watson Research building. Walking along the curved halls next to the outside glass somehow felt like taking a promenade outdoors, I guess because when you look ahead of you you're looking through the glass rather than looking down the hall.
Within the offices you couldn't tell the building was curved.
One problem with the Watson Research building was that the convex curvature of the glass on the outside created a strong pressure differential between inside and outside when there was a breeze (by the Bernoulli effect). It sometimes made opening doors to the outside difficult. Presumably Apple will anticipate that.
Yep, we have more respect and protections for the environment than ~80% of nations, and we led the way.
This is absolutely true.
However, the US is rapidly falling behind from its past, unequalled leadership position.
.... (see my other posting about USA being first in most everything).
This is nonsense.
If it weren't for "liberals" there would be no Apple. For an example of "conservative" business thinking, look at Microsoft and Dell.
EDIT: I am going to assume you were just joking.
While I?m far from an expert on the subject I?ve read a little about designing/structuring spaces to enhance particular ways humans interact with the environment.
The comment that this campus is not well integrated within the rest of the city is a valid point, but in all fairness which company really does that with their HQ now that secrecy is paramount to maintaining a competitive advantage?
The design is not bad it?s just emphasising internal rather than external collaboration. The low profile encourages people to walk between floors and office spaces rather than take elevators. And the circular shape encourages outdoor excursions by making them the shortest route between any two points.
The all glass exterior makes this less imposing. Much like Apple products, it doesn?t pretend to ?fit? into the existing landscape, but rather ?invite? you into a new one.
Your comment paints the picture of the new campus very well. It would be interesting to see the elephant trails in the center after a few months.
LOL WUT? The parking IS underground
According to an AI article from three days ago "Apple has detailed plans to build a massive parking garage along the 280 freeway, although it's not clear if much of the structure would even be visible from the highway. San Francisco Chronicle architecture columnist John King described the structure in noting that "the parking garage would signal Apple's presence to I-280 commuters with a freeway-friendly sweep."
The new garage would be four stories and 1,440 feet (about 440 meters) in length, with spaces for 4,300 cars. That's 1,715 spaces larger than San Francisco's largest parking structure, the Fifth and Mission garage adjacent to Moscone West, where Apple holds its Worldwide Developer Conference each summer.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...cupertino.html
According to an AI article from three days ago "Apple has detailed plans to build a massive parking garage along the 280 freeway, although it's not clear if much of the structure would even be visible from the highway. San Francisco Chronicle architecture columnist John King described the structure in noting that "the parking garage would signal Apple's presence to I-280 commuters with a freeway-friendly sweep."
The new garage would be four stories and 1,440 feet (about 440 meters) in length, with spaces for 4,300 cars. That's 1,715 spaces larger than San Francisco's largest parking structure, the Fifth and Mission garage adjacent to Moscone West, where Apple holds its Worldwide Developer Conference each summer.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...cupertino.html
... plus an underground structure to hold another 4000+ vehicles. (as I noted in another post earlier today)
Accordingly, I have decided to take up neurosurgery. I have heard of it, which should be enough. More than enough, given what I've read here.
The best theory stays within the bounds of reality!
Ah, but there is where you fail to understand the critic or theorist, as they are basically cut from the same cloth. The "validity" of a theory is inversely proportional to it's grasp of what most folks would call "reality". Mind you, I'm not talking (really) about the so called hard sciences where we've invented the scientific method to try and tie theory to reality a bit closer. I'm talking about the arts and "softer" (hate that word) sciences where theories are only vaguely testable. Mainly because it's impossible to isolate all the variables. Economics, architecture, art, politics, etc.
In these areas, the less in touch with "reality" the better the theory must be. How can this be? Well, the logic goes like this: The reality of whatever the situation is is dirty, messy, and broken (economy, urban areas, government, etc). Any theory that actually deals with this reality will also, by association, wind up dirty, messy, and broken. To have a clean, workable, and "correct" theory, you must perforce remove your thinking "beyond" the broken reality to the plane of ideals where properly scholastic discussion can result in refining the ideas into something purer.
The critic is not concerned with plebeian concerns like what city the building is in, blah, blah, blah. The new campus does not fit well into the architectural theory of the "ideal" space. You could say that the critic is on crack, out of touch with reality, etc. But think about this. If no one has delineated what the "ideal" should be, how can we work towards that and away for the dirty, messy, and broken reality we currently have?
--MDG
It's interesting in a totally laughable sort of way how these boards have developed a corp of instant but otherwise deeply committed architecture and city planning experts. How many of them, I wonder, have ever taken an interest in architecture or city planning before? My guess is approximately zero. And yet these instant experts know to the core of their beings that the new Apple campus is a great exercise in architecture and planning and nothing else could possibly be better. I wonder how many of them had even heard of Christopher Hawthorne before this article was posted here, let alone read his columns for years. My guess is approximately zero. And yet, they are convinced to within a millimeter of their lives that Hawthorne is a know-nothing hack. Their confidence and certainty about subjects and people they know nothing whatsoever about is almost inspirational.
Accordingly, I have decided to take up neurosurgery. I have heard of it, which should be enough. More than enough, given what I've read here.
I read the whole article and I thought it was a bit of hackery. This in no way qualifies you to be a neurosurgeon.
It's interesting in a totally laughable sort of way how these boards have developed a corp of instant but otherwise deeply committed architecture and city planning experts. How many of them, I wonder, have ever taken an interest in architecture or city planning before? My guess is approximately zero. And yet these instant experts know to the core of their beings that the new Apple campus is a great exercise in architecture and planning and nothing else could possibly be better. I wonder how many of them had even heard of Christopher Hawthorne before this article was posted here, let alone read his columns for years. My guess is approximately zero. And yet, they are convinced to within a millimeter of their lives that Hawthorne is a know-nothing hack. Their confidence and certainty about subjects and people they know nothing whatsoever about is almost inspirational.
Accordingly, I have decided to take up neurosurgery. I have heard of it, which should be enough. More than enough, given what I've read here.
I read the whole article and I thought it was a bit of hackery. This in no way qualifies you to be a neurosurgeon.
I read it too. At the risk of being seen as self-aggrandizing here is the link to my previous post which addressed this:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showp...&postcount=110
It's interesting in a totally laughable sort of way how these boards have developed a corp of instant but otherwise deeply committed architecture and city planning experts. How many of them, I wonder, have ever taken an interest in architecture or city planning before? My guess is approximately zero. And yet these instant experts know to the core of their beings that the new Apple campus is a great exercise in architecture and planning and nothing else could possibly be better. I wonder how many of them had even heard of Christopher Hawthorne before this article was posted here, let alone read his columns for years. My guess is approximately zero. And yet, they are convinced to within a millimeter of their lives that Hawthorne is a know-nothing hack. Their confidence and certainty about subjects and people they know nothing whatsoever about is almost inspirational.
Accordingly, I have decided to take up neurosurgery. I have heard of it, which should be enough. More than enough, given what I've read here.
I visit and read comments on architectural websites (Architectural Record). Many remarks here show more insight.