Apple Park
I visited Apple Park (Apple's new campus) a few times.
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2018-04-06 |
If a picture is 1,000 words, then this is a long article
There's a store/visitor center across the street, with underground parking. That's where visitors come in.
They have a really neat AR experience: they have this model made of machines aluminum, with a built-in grid. If you hold up an iPad they have, you can walk around it, and see the trees/landscaping and building in full color. They have some markers on various buildings. And you can virtually lift the roof off any building and see the floor-plans.
You cross the street, enter the second visitors center (the badging area) where they check your invite and give you a temp badge, and let you through the airlock to get inside. Then you walk a path to building 2 (EC2).
Once inside, you go to the inside of the ring, to traverse the various buildings (with coffee/snack shops inside at various ring segments).
The Pentagon fits inside the outer-shell. And it has a large inner quad (technically a highly overloaded term for a Quadrangle, not a circular open-space). Still, it has a nice cafeteria, outdoor seating, a few outbuildings (to be snack shops/cafeterias), orchards, a reflecting/meditation pool, and a large lawned area for internal events (Beer Bashes, concerts, etc).
Their reflecting pool, with an underwater wave maker in the center. It's actually quite a large area inside, with long walk-ways. Currently they allow (and have shared bikes) all around the outside of the rings (the pathways). But inside, they do not allow biking.
On the inside looking out.
Hallway shot that gives you the aesthetic feel
Or this gives you the inside aesthetic: Very Logan's run goes to Sweden
Conclusion[edit | edit source]
In the end, it's very pretty and won all sorts of architecture awards and has a feel that's a cross between an Apple Store, a 1970's SciFi show (say Logan's run), and some austere Norwegian chic decor.
There are things like glass barriers and no bannisters to prevent you from falling off the higher floors. I did not see any face-prints from the rumors of walking into walls from the Wired article. It didn't seem that hard to figure out where walls and doors were to me, though some handles are unique. The meeting rooms have aluminum louver blinds inside two panes of glass, so when in use, you push a button and the walls go opaque in an old-school method (no LCD glass).
This isn't my taste in architecture. It's gorgeous, in it's own minimalist way. But for me, good architecture is marrying Form and Function together into a whole. This feels like Jonathan Ive's, form over function. Open Floor-plans, not enough meeting places, hard echo'ing surfaces, and everything spread out through a ginormous campus. Pretty and airy, but there's no good way to organize things conveniently close in this kind of space, so everyone is getting their steps in. Which might be good for health/exercise, but is not efficient for actually getting things done. (A simple grid of taller and interconnected buildings, would have worked much better).
So it's not my thang, but then Apple gets to decide what their own thang and brand should look like.
🔗 More
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🔗 Links
- https://www.apple.com/retail/appleparkvisitorcenter/
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-I-could-tell-you-but-then-I-would-have-to-kill-you
Tags: AppleLife Experiences
