I think what this person forgets is that some people don't want to live in a city. They like driving their cars everywhere. Apple doesn't want to build a suburb in their campus. They want it to be a great place for employees to do great work.
I think in time this will bite Apple. Case in point is Google v. Amazon v. Microsoft in the Seattle area. Google: buildings in a funky neighborhood with lots of amenities. Amazon: buildings just north of downtown in cool neighborhood. Microsoft: commute to suburban Redmond where things get... blander.
I meet lots of go-get-em younger engineers who cross Microsoft off their list of potential employers on the basis of being in Redmond. Microsoft has to bus the hipsters from Capitol Hill.
For better or for worse, a more suburban kind of campus will likely scare off younguns in favor of older, more family-oriented, more car-dependent employees.
The article is correct in so far as the new Apple building is not consistent with contemporary urban design principles.
Curved glass aside, it's basically The Pentagon of 1943 in so far as functional layout goes combined with 1957's site planning for the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company plopped in the middle of a contemporary bedroom community's street grid.
What it lacks in comparison to both is any sense of urban scaled outdoor space (the courtyards between rings of the Pentagon and Noguchi's courtyards for the SOM design).
Apple's new building is what Robert Venturi would call "A duck."
His complaint that you won't be able to walk across the campus is silly -- the current HP campus is fenced off too.
And I'm not really sure who would be walking where across it anyway. It's bordered on the south side by I-280. There is a strip mall on the other side of Wolfe, on the west side, but immediately to the east is office buildings and a Kaiser Permanente facility -- well, I guess there is some housing on the other side of Tantau, but not much, and east of that is Lawrence Expressway.
It's only across Homestead on the north side that there is much of a residential area.
In short, I don't see that there are many people who would walk across the campus even if they could.
(I live a couple of miles away, and drive by it all the time.)
I kind of like all the trees that you see on the new campus. From the ground, the trees even obstruct most of the building. I don't think the extra distance matters much on a bike but I guess if you're walking in that area it's an extra 10 minutes.
Maybe Apple can build a maglev down that main street so people can more easily commute to work and really reduce traffic. Only joking, of course, but Apple does have enough cash to build the high-speed rail from LA to SF.
I agree with many of the authors points, prefer downtown/midtown style development and, broadly, think that architecture since the world wars has been an abomination foisted on us by academics and lunatics, implemented by incompetents.
However, I'd like to make one point: it's Apple's money, they can do what they want.
> However, I'd like to make one point: it's Apple's money, they can do what they want.
The city has an "Environmental Impact Review" process whereby citizens OF CUPERTINO at least have the right to whine about it a bit and plead for a few more concessions here and there to "community values". But there's no chance this isn't going through - Apple is by far the biggest taxpayer in Cupertino and the threat that they might move somewhere else if they couldn't do this here is too potent.
They're replacing a massive campus covered in parking lots with orchards. They are building an underground parking garage. They're planting thousands of trees. They're building foot paths, they've hired an arborist to make tree selection, they're brining orange groves back to silicon valley. They've designed probably the GREENest campus I've ever seen....
What's not seen on these drawings is the underground freeway[1] that takes cars off of the streets and into the campus, to the parking garages, and other facilities. This means a lot of surface concrete that would be required to support these employees is hidden, leaving more room for grass and trees.
What's wrong with that?
These people would actually RATHER that hugely inefficient parking lot that HP built? Really?
Orange groves are nice but they're not necessarily a great form of land use in an urban area. If you build an orange grove in one location then the housing and everything else that could have otherwise been there gets pushed farther out. Distances between things increase and people have to travel farther.
It might become a great campus, but do I think something higher density with a mix of uses would be more environmentally friendly.
[+] [-] RandallBrown|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peatmoss|14 years ago|reply
I meet lots of go-get-em younger engineers who cross Microsoft off their list of potential employers on the basis of being in Redmond. Microsoft has to bus the hipsters from Capitol Hill.
For better or for worse, a more suburban kind of campus will likely scare off younguns in favor of older, more family-oriented, more car-dependent employees.
[+] [-] brudgers|14 years ago|reply
Curved glass aside, it's basically The Pentagon of 1943 in so far as functional layout goes combined with 1957's site planning for the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company plopped in the middle of a contemporary bedroom community's street grid.
What it lacks in comparison to both is any sense of urban scaled outdoor space (the courtyards between rings of the Pentagon and Noguchi's courtyards for the SOM design).
Apple's new building is what Robert Venturi would call "A duck."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Pentagon_January_2008....
http://www.som.com/local/common/modules/gallery/dsp_image_ga...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Duck
[+] [-] ScottBurson|14 years ago|reply
And I'm not really sure who would be walking where across it anyway. It's bordered on the south side by I-280. There is a strip mall on the other side of Wolfe, on the west side, but immediately to the east is office buildings and a Kaiser Permanente facility -- well, I guess there is some housing on the other side of Tantau, but not much, and east of that is Lawrence Expressway.
It's only across Homestead on the north side that there is much of a residential area.
In short, I don't see that there are many people who would walk across the campus even if they could.
(I live a couple of miles away, and drive by it all the time.)
[+] [-] swartzrock|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melling|14 years ago|reply
Maybe Apple can build a maglev down that main street so people can more easily commute to work and really reduce traffic. Only joking, of course, but Apple does have enough cash to build the high-speed rail from LA to SF.
[+] [-] carsongross|14 years ago|reply
However, I'd like to make one point: it's Apple's money, they can do what they want.
[+] [-] glenra|14 years ago|reply
The city has an "Environmental Impact Review" process whereby citizens OF CUPERTINO at least have the right to whine about it a bit and plead for a few more concessions here and there to "community values". But there's no chance this isn't going through - Apple is by far the biggest taxpayer in Cupertino and the threat that they might move somewhere else if they couldn't do this here is too potent.
Plus it's, you know, kind of cool.
[+] [-] huxley|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nirvana|14 years ago|reply
What's not seen on these drawings is the underground freeway[1] that takes cars off of the streets and into the campus, to the parking garages, and other facilities. This means a lot of surface concrete that would be required to support these employees is hidden, leaving more room for grass and trees.
What's wrong with that?
These people would actually RATHER that hugely inefficient parking lot that HP built? Really?
[+] [-] mwd_|14 years ago|reply
It might become a great campus, but do I think something higher density with a mix of uses would be more environmentally friendly.