Latest Apple Park drone footage shows majority of construction complete
The latest drone footage of the Apple Park headquarters shows detail work in progress, and a view of the historic barn, prior to the opening of the facility to employees.
The latest footage, labeled June, but published on Tuesday shows a partially unclad Steve Jobs Theater, and a good overview of the entire site, including the parking garage, continued work on landscaping, and the research facility.
Also detailed is the historic barn on the campus, now in the midst of renovation and nearly ready for foot traffic.
As with footage from earlier in the month, Apple Park still has a long way to go before being fully complete. While Apple may be moving employees in shortly, they will have to contend with landscaping and finish work continuing for what appears to be months, if not a full year.
On Feb. 22, Apple officially named the "spaceship" campus under construction. The entire facility is now called "Apple Park," with the 20-foot tall and 165 foot in diameter glass auditorium honoring one of the founders of the company and named the "Steve Jobs Theater."
Before the massive construction effort started, the area was Hewlett Packard's land, and was essentially completely paved over. Apple's demand for trees is reportedly putting pressure on the local market, forcing contractors to source from outside California. The final tree count is expected to approach 9,000, with apple, apricot, cherry, and persimmon trees dotting the landscape.
An environmentally-friendly design was paramount to Jobs's vision, and Apple's related Phase 2 project adds additional workspace adjacent to the main headquarters, and includes a small data center powered by on-site the on-site solar farm, fuel cells, and other sources of renewable energy.
A new micro-grid installed on the campus is reportedly capable of delivering 17 megawatts of power from solar alone, and handling about 75 percent of the facility's power requirements. The solar installation is supplemented by Bloom Energy-provided fuel cells, similar to those installed at the North Carolina data center.
The latest footage, labeled June, but published on Tuesday shows a partially unclad Steve Jobs Theater, and a good overview of the entire site, including the parking garage, continued work on landscaping, and the research facility.
Also detailed is the historic barn on the campus, now in the midst of renovation and nearly ready for foot traffic.
As with footage from earlier in the month, Apple Park still has a long way to go before being fully complete. While Apple may be moving employees in shortly, they will have to contend with landscaping and finish work continuing for what appears to be months, if not a full year.
On Feb. 22, Apple officially named the "spaceship" campus under construction. The entire facility is now called "Apple Park," with the 20-foot tall and 165 foot in diameter glass auditorium honoring one of the founders of the company and named the "Steve Jobs Theater."
Before the massive construction effort started, the area was Hewlett Packard's land, and was essentially completely paved over. Apple's demand for trees is reportedly putting pressure on the local market, forcing contractors to source from outside California. The final tree count is expected to approach 9,000, with apple, apricot, cherry, and persimmon trees dotting the landscape.
An environmentally-friendly design was paramount to Jobs's vision, and Apple's related Phase 2 project adds additional workspace adjacent to the main headquarters, and includes a small data center powered by on-site the on-site solar farm, fuel cells, and other sources of renewable energy.
A new micro-grid installed on the campus is reportedly capable of delivering 17 megawatts of power from solar alone, and handling about 75 percent of the facility's power requirements. The solar installation is supplemented by Bloom Energy-provided fuel cells, similar to those installed at the North Carolina data center.
Comments
Still can't wait until this is completely finished and the landscaping is all grown in. This is going to look stunning!
http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/12/29/apple-to-keep-century-old-historic-barn-on-campus-2-grounds
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/12/29/apple-campus-2-historic-barn/
http://www.mercurynews.com/2014/12/26/apple-to-save-historic-barn-on-site-of-new-cupertino-campus
Basically, it's a barn that has been on the property for a century. Steve wanted to keep it to pay tribute to the area's rich agricultural history.
I think we're at least a month away from any move-ins. And I don't think the site will be "complete" until early 2018.
It will be very interesting to see if the designers were successful in avoiding traffic jams and in getting employees to and from their workplaces efficiently. I think Apple employees are going to be doing a lot of walking -- that should keep them all in pretty good shape.
Yeah I think thats the law in most areas with a certificate of occupancy. Maybe they've worked something out with the City of Cupertino/County?
We don't know the actual state of the internals of the main building so its hard to say when employees will actually be able to move in.
The traffic will be interesting, but its not like all 13,000 employees will be there at once and not all 13,000 employees drive in. Many take buses supplied by Apple, some ride their bikes in, others could actually just walk depending on where they live, and some may carpool.
I'm not saying you're thinking this, but I love the people who think that employees are going to be running around the entire building all day just to get somewhere, or to collaborate with others. Do you really think Apple and the architects didn't think about how the building would be laid out internally? Especially with a building of this size. Like they're really going to put one team on one end of the build and another that is working with them on the other end. Lets not be silly here. I'm pretty sure the internal layout is completely planned out. I bet most don't even know how people work inside of Apple so it might be a moot point to begin with. Not all companies run themselves the same internally.
Also, it seems fairly obvious that Apple is setting up a certain area of the inner circle for presentations/beer bashes with the slope leading up to the Apple orchard (with literal apple trees) backdrop (the area of the inner circle closest to SJ Theater, looking out onto the central plain). It will make for pretty amazing photo ops (esp. taken from a similar vantage point to the video at 2:27, with the pond in the distance).
I think it was a nice touch keeping the barn, not just for the historical context, but also by serving as a contrast/juxtaposition between our unsophisticated past (design wise) and the future, which Apple already operates in (design wise).
I have no idea what that unfinished rectangular structure behind the fitness center could be.
I wonder where visitor center parking will be? And nice touch having visitors walk by a berm so they can have a close-up appreciation for the sculpted topography of Apple Park.
Also very interesting, the last structure being built (seen at the end of the video) does not seem like any of the other buildings at all. It's also not labeled on Apple Maps (like the other Tannu buildings are). However, it's unique structure is visible on Apple Maps. It looks more like a showroom than anything else. And with all that empty space surrounding it, makes for a very atypical location. Maybe.. an Apple Car showroom/demo area??
The shadows indicate that there are underground walls at this site, so the parking garage will be underground. Access will be from the north side (right below the striped crosswalk), you can see the current dirt ramp which will be removed once they pour concrete. The visitor center garage will be strictly isolated from the employee parking at Apple Park across the street.
It's worth pointing out that the Apple Maps satellite imagery is quite old and the Google Maps imagery is even worse.
Neither of the two maps shows the extent of the solar panel coverage on the main ring building which is visually complete in recent drone videography footage.
If you compare the two mapping systems, it is easy to see that the Google Maps imagery is considerably older since one of the two multi-story parking garages on the south perimeter is lacking solar panels. This also shows that Apple's construction contractors tore down a number of buildings on the west side of North Tantau Avenue and also ripped out the asphalt road leading to these buildings.
Ah, I see now. I think I was mistaking what is probably a security kiosk (on the west side of Tantau) with the visitors center, which appears to actually be the 'strange' building I was referring to (on the east side of Tantau), which makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the clarifications.
Edit: I reviewed some old layouts of Apple Park to see where I was off, and the small building to the left of Tantau is clearly labeled as a security kiosk. The area where presumably the visitor center will be (thanks mpantone) is labeled just as a parking structure (which was probably considered as a possible visitor center site at the time; if I remember correctly, Apple wasn't sure initially whether they were going to include a visitor center or not).