0 1 design concept
Equality, innovation and communication
Unlike the headquarters of many large companies, which are made up of buildings, Apple's new headquarters is a circular building. Jobs personally designed the website here before his death. He called it "a spaceship falling from the sky"; The San Francisco Journal called it a "giant glass doughnut". However, China netizens with wide brain holes ridiculed it as Fujian Tulou.
As for why such a headquarters should be built, Jobs has publicly responded to the planning of the new headquarters park.
He said that in the past ten years, the number of Apple employees has soared, occupying more than 100 buildings. Now, he wants to establish a new headquarters. His expectation for this new headquarters is: "the best office building in the world, and I hope it is a place that architecture students are willing to visit."
Norman foster is the designer of Apple's new headquarters. Jobs told Foster not to think of himself as Party B, but as a member of the Apple team. At that time, Jobs was deeply involved in and promoted the design of the new building. And this new building is also considered to be the embodiment of Jobs' will.
For example, it used to be the former site of HP's office building, and it was also the place where Jobs had his first summer internship. The design of this new building is based on Stanford University, because Jobs' childhood home is not far from Stanford University. Jobs once gave a speech to graduates here. "Follow your heart" comes from this.
No wonder everyone commented that "Apple headquarters is not only a park, but also the last product that Jobs worked hard to build".
Apple's new headquarters has only four floors. Why only build four floors? Because California is an earthquake-active area, the buildings here are relatively short. In order to resist the earthquake, Apple Park was built on a huge steel isolator. It can ensure that the whole building can move 1.5 meters in any direction, and the internal functions can be used normally.
There is also a saying that this also reflects the culture of equality for all. Unlike many office buildings, the floors of the office often reflect the level of employees. The higher the position, the higher the office.
The whole building has a total construction area of 260,000 square meters and can accommodate 654.38+200,000 employees. How big is this area? John John Martellaro, author of The Mac Observer, compared it with the Pentagon and other things.
From top to bottom: luxury cruise ships; Nuclear-powered aircraft carrier; US Navy MZ-3A empty boat; Battleships during World War II; Empire State Building; Supertanker.
In addition to the ring-shaped Apple Building, the whole park also plans the Jobs Theatre, the visitor center, the staff canteen and the staff fitness center.
1, office space
For the office in the main building, Jobs mentioned the concept of Pod to norman foster many times. He hopes to divide the whole headquarters into several pods with adjustable size and porous structure. According to the concept of Pod, Foster's team designed schemes including clover, Mobius ring and propeller, but for various reasons, the concept of ring was finally adopted.
▲ Early design sketches
The distribution of office space follows democracy, and even the CEO can only occupy a standard size. On one side of the carriage is a glass door, which is convenient for employees to contact colleagues and nature. However, due to the culture of secrecy, some compartments use translucent glass.
2. restaurants
There are several restaurants with so many people in the building, only one, because Jobs hopes that employees can have more contacts and exchanges, which is conducive to the collision of new ideas. I feel that Jobs is obsessed with this matter, because when he built the Pixar building, he asked the building to have only one bathroom. Maybe he can say a few words after washing his hands in the bathroom to get inspiration.
This restaurant is 5,500 square meters, and the chefs and waiters will be Apple's own employees, and will not be outsourced like most companies.
3. Jobs Theatre
To commemorate Jobs, Apple named the auditorium of the new campus Steve Jobs Theater. This auditorium can hold 1000 people, and all new Apple products will be released here in the future.
The Jobs Theatre is located on the highest mountain in Apple Park. What is particularly amazing about this auditorium is that there are no pillars on the roof, which seems to be suspended in the air.
▲ Jobs Theatre, image source: Universal Design
The theater is hidden underground, and there is no entrance on it. Go down the next stairs and walk to the door of the theater.
▲ At the entrance of Jobs Theatre, image source: Universal Design.
4. Visitor Center
In order to let more fruit fans visit and understand Apple, Apple's new headquarters has planned a 200-square-meter "visitor center" where visitors can enjoy the park scenery, drink coffee and buy some apple souvenirs.
▲ Visitor Center
5. Transportation system
In order to facilitate employees to move around inside, Apple provided 1 0,000 bicycles for employees in the park. And there are two underground garages for parking, which can park 65438+2000 cars.
In addition to bicycles, Apple also provides short-distance buses for employees, and at least one-third of employees don't have to drive to work by themselves. If you want to drive, the way to enter the park is to drill into the underground tunnel and go directly to the underground parking lot of Apple Park.
02
Delicate materials
Create high quality at all costs.
Just as Apple's pursuit of quality as a mobile phone is close to madness, Apple's ingenuity in architecture is first reflected in its emphasis on basic materials. When building Apple Park, they almost traveled all over the world in order to find suitable materials. Give a few simple examples:
1. The roof of Jobs Theatre was shipped directly from the desert.
The roof of Jobs Theatre mentioned above is special because it is a carbon brazing roof, which consists of 44 panels, about 2 1.3m long and 3.35m wide. It was assembled in Dubai and then airlifted, with a total weight of 80 tons.
2, 10 months as a desk.
A special oversized white oak desk was made by a Dutch design company with a history of 100 years. It is 5.5 meters long and 1.2 meters wide. From material selection to production, each desktop needs 10 months.
Pacific chairs with simple design, each 1 185 USD. According to the calculation of Apple 12000 employees, office chairs alone cost tens of millions of dollars.
3. Trees
The requirements for greening in the new Apple Park are also very high. They said that the whole park should plant 10000 trees, and the park coverage rate should reach 80%. Of course, there are 6 hectares of grassland.
In order to create an ecosystem in the garden, Apple invited Dave Muffly, a tree artist from Stanford, to introduce 309 kinds of plants. Oak and apple trees are the most widely planted, along with apricot, olive, persimmon, plum and cherry. The fruits of these fruit trees will be supplied to restaurants.
▲ Image source: 9to5Mac
▲ Purple dots represent plum trees, orange represents apricot trees, brown represents olive trees, red represents persimmon trees, pink represents cherry trees and yellow represents apple trees.
Planting trees is not only for beauty, but also for improving work efficiency. Tim Cook said, "When I really think about some problems, I want to be close to nature. Now, we have done it, and it is different from other companies in Silicon Valley. "
4. (Czech) Stalne; Stalne (Sweden); (British) Si Tong
At the Apple Park Fitness Center, the stones on the walls of the yoga studio are all shipped from the best quarry in Kansas.
5, office wall wood
Initially, Jobs asked architects how to cut wood, and hoped that the wood used in office walls would be cut down in winter. The most ideal time is June+10 in 5438, because the wood contained the lowest liquid and sugar at that time. Finally, the team customized a board made of recycled wood.
6, using the world's largest curved glass.
The whole circular exterior wall of Apple Building is made of the largest single curved glass in the world. These glasses come from Apple's long-term partner Sedak. The whole building needs to use 3 100 pieces of such single glass, and the heaviest glass weighs 3 tons.
▲ Glass similar to "brim", the picture comes from Apple.
03
Abnormal construction execution
You can't have any fingerprints
Because Jobs attached great importance to details, the final details were changed again and again, so the project was delayed for eight years.
Reuters found that 20 current or former employees worked for this building this year, and got some interesting details. According to these employees, Apple regards Apple Campus 2 as a huge iPhone-from pipes and glass to elevators to buttons, which follows strict standards of hardware design.
But in the eyes of many people, these crazy insistence on details is a bit too "abnormal".
1, the ceiling must be spotless inside and outside.
Apple executives told the construction team many times that the bright ceiling made of concrete must be spotless inside and outside, as dustproof as the headphone jack of Iphone.
2. Apple thinks that doors can't have thresholds.
A former construction manager explained that this is because if employees change their gait because of the threshold when entering the building, they will be distracted from their work.
3. The instruction manual on the use of wood provided by Apple to the contractor is as long as 30 pages.
The elevator button must be like the Home button of the mobile phone.
La Torre, a German architect, said that Apple asked the elevator button to look like the Home button of a mobile phone. Apple executives believe that the Home button is an ideal size, a standard and a design that has experienced many years of experiments.
5. The handle design was reworked for one and a half years.
Just the design of the door handle, Apple let the builders rework it for a year and a half. Apple requires that the door handle should not be connected with screws, and must be integrated with the door frame, and the handle should have the same aluminum texture as the MacBook Pro.
Image source: Connected
6. The fire department held a meeting on 15 fire signs.
Because the original general fire signs were ugly, Apple redesigned all the standards in order to look beautiful and practical, but the design of each sign must be approved by the fire department. Dirk Mattern, former deputy director of Santa Clara County Fire Department, held 15 talks with Apple. He said, "I have never spent so much time on the sign of fire."
7. The glass size error should not exceed 0.88 mm..
Apple also has extremely strict requirements for building tolerances, and the dimensional accuracy error of glass does not exceed 1/32 inches (about 0.88 mm). The glass itself increases the difficulty of construction, but Apple also requires that there should be no vents or pipes reflecting light on the glass to affect the look and feel. This is really crazy for the construction party.
8. The desk can't see any buttons.
Every Apple employee's desk can automatically adjust its height. The button is installed at the bottom of the table. The adjustment button is designed in a concave-convex shape, the convex button is used to raise the table, and the concave button is the opposite, so you don't have to bend over to look at the button. In order to make all kinds of charging wires and wires on the table have storage space, the design of the table has gone through several iterations.
9, the final delivery can not even leave fingerprints.
District Council 16, the contractor in charge of painting, said that workers could not leave fingerprints when they finally delivered the building, so they had to wear gloves for construction.
04
Pay attention to environmental protection
Don't turn on the air conditioner for 9 months every year.
The design of the apple orchard also carried out the concept of environmental protection. Mainly reflected in the following aspects: for example, electricity mainly comes from solar power generation, domestic water can be recycled, and natural ventilation should be used as much as possible, so that the air conditioner can be operated for 9 months.
First of all, solar panels are laid on the top of the whole building, and the power generation capacity is 17 MW. Apple plans to use solar energy to generate electricity.
Secondly, there is a building called "Breathing Building" in the park, which is the regulator of indoor ventilation. The concrete on the building floor and ceiling has water pipes to adjust the temperature, and the room temperature can be kept between 20-25 degrees Celsius. And try to use natural wind to ventilate the park, and you can open glass doors for ventilation. Apple claims that it doesn't need air conditioning or heating for nine months of the year.
What's more, Apple has designed a set of circulating water treatment system, and non-domestic water can be used to water trees or something.
summary
Regarding the question that many people question whether it is worthwhile to invest manpower, material resources and time in Apple's new headquarters, Jonathan Ive, Apple's chief designer, said that it is very frustrating to talk about this building with almost ridiculous huge data. Although it is amazing from some data, you don't live in these numbers.
Even though the manufacturing process of these glasses is a technological miracle, it is not an achievement. Our achievement lies in establishing a space where many people can contact, cooperate, walk and chat. "
He believes that the value of architecture lies not in its input, but in the results it brings. Apple Park's "taboo" in design and manufacturing is to encourage the company's engineers, designers and even coffee shop managers to create the highest quality and innovative products as much as possible.