During the Cupertino City Council Meeting yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave a presentation outlining the company’s plans for a new headquarters. The headquarters, which Jobs referred to as a “spaceship,” would be placed on the former Hewlett-Packard campus purchased by the company last year, and would be completely circular, with a courtyard in the center. According to Jobs, there wouldn’t be a single piece of flat glass used in the building; it would instead be built from curved architectural glass, of the same kind the company used to build the cylindrical glass entrance to its Shanghai retail store.
The building would feature underground parking, a cafe capable of feeding 3,000 people per sitting, and would house 12,000 employees. Jobs referred to the structure as having the potential to be the “best office building in the world.”
Apart from the main building, the surrounding land would be heavily rebalanced in favor of green areas and away from asphalt; Jobs said the site is currently 20% landscape, and Apple’s plan would make it 80% landscape, moving from 3,700 on-site trees to roughly 6,000, the latter including some apricot orchards. Other buildings included in the plan are a separate, second parking structure, an energy center which would use primarily natural gas and other power sources, and rely on the grid for backup, an auditorium, a fitness center, and separate testing buildings.
Between the company’s existing campus and the new headquarters, Apple could keep 15,000 employees in Cupertino. Jobs said that the company would like to submit plans for the site as quickly as possible, break ground in 2012, and move in to the new headquarters by 2015. A video of Jobs’ presentation is available on YouTube and is embedded below.
