I work in a small office park located quite similarly on a grassy field locked entirely by some freeways and other large roads, though the buildings here are cheap and ugly, but even if they weren't, it'd still totally suck. It's isolated, not a part of the city, essentially, it's just a large parking lot (most of which is below the ground, but that doesn't really change anything).

It's quite disappointing. Maybe it's a marvel of architecture, but indeed it's a failure of urbanism (which, I believe, is much more important). It's 2011 and we're still building things while thinking in predefined square lots separated by roads? Such a shame.

A bit of Silly Valley lore: Go graph "Company builds a new campus" against "Company stock falls like a rock."

Atari, 1983.

Apple, 1991.

Sun (both times, I forget the years).

SGI, 1990s.

Various other companies (I forget which, it's been a while). It's like the hubris builds up to the point where the company is in a natural position to say, "Hey, we need a new campus," and the Gods decide that a little humiliation is in order as well . . .

I don't know, I worked in a campus with a huge courtyard in the middle, though smaller than this, and it was mostly wasted unused space. I think it actually makes different parts of the company feel more isolated from each other because the other side of the building is so far way, the middle almost feels like an intimidating wilderness that you stay away from. If instead you have multiple smaller buildings connected by meandering paths it gives a campus a friendlier feeling.

Apple style - one monolithic building designed down to the square foot.

Google style - a motley assortment of buildings spread out over a large campus, some of which are better than others.

The project looks like a literal approach to the walled garden idea.

Just for perspective:

Proposed Appleplex: 1.4 mil sq ft (?), 12-13k employees

Pentagon: 6.5 mil sq ft (3.7 mil for offices), 26k employees

Empire State Building: 2.8 mil sq ft, 21k (?) employees

I find it extremely interesting that they'll be using natural gas as their primary energy source for the campus and using the electrical grid as their backup. Is this really cost effective? Are many businesses doing this?

That council is so embarrassing.

Only Steve could glue me to the screen for 20 mins to watch a city council meeting.

It's like listening to PT Barnum read the J Peterman catalog.

Watching this presentation makes me think of how important it is to stick to your values across everything you are doing. The building Steve jobs presented has some of the same design principles found in the recent apple products; roundness, simplicity, clean neutral colors, environmental friendly, etc. I think this gives apple great appeal.

I, too, found myself watching the proceedings for longer than I should have. The design is elegant and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Ironically, the most amazing thing about the video is seeing a modern icon in such a quotidian scenario.

When I saw the photos, I figured that the building's circumference would be so wide that curved glass would not just be unnecessary, but almost counter-productive, as it's difficult to curve glass without imperfections that might ruin its reflections.

Surely we'd be talking about small fractions of a degree per pane.

Can anyone estimate what the building circumference is, and therefore what amount of curve would be called for?

This isn't the first time he's presented to the council, I remember a previous show he put on that was also on YouTube, over 5 years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meVQqYNGzYA

I understand that Apple is a very important company to Cupertino, but I've never need a city counsel so lovestruck at a meeting. They should just give him a rubber stamp for whatever he wants to do.

They should have asked when the iPhone 5 is coming out

Plus: very sneaky for the council to ask for free wifi, ipads, more apple stores, donations for schools in this presentation...

Is it just me who shuddered every time when council leaders asked those completely off-topic idiotic questions? Free wifi, really?

Really, really nice looking building and landscaping.

Why keep the IL1 campus, instead of just moving everybody into a slightly larger mothership in 2015?

It reminds me somewhat of the Borland campus. That thing was Japanese inspired, and shaped like a kind of jagged C, but similarly had a large central courtyard, and due to its shape had lots of natural light in the offices.

What a lesser mind would come up with given a similar breif:

"Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Cheltenham, United Kingdom"

http://www.designbuild-network.com/projects/gchq/gchq1.html

Not only will the new building become a tourist destination but it will be a prime tool for recruiting.

I wonder how it is structured inside. 12,000 people still seems like a lot for that building. Does anybody know how Apple employees are typically structured? Is it offices for everybody? Open spaces with collaborative work spaces?

Well now you know what they've been hoarding that cash money for.

Quite daring, to plan such a building. Who knows whether they will need the space, four years from now? With multiple buildings, it is easier to make corrections during construction or even afterwards.

Also, it will be a challenge to make that underground garage look as beautiful as the building. That is what most visitors will initially see from the building.

Finally, will this be a real click wheel or a modern version without moving parts? :-)

This isn't impressive to me. What would be impressive would be building a skyscraper in downtown SF. Being environmentally friendly isn't building a massive campus on a plot of suburban grassland. Apple likes to say they think differently, but this isn't different. It's just slightly nicer than most other headquarters in a suburban wasteland.

I recently went to 1 infinite loop for the first time, and was extremely disappointed with the building. It was strikingly anti-apple in its aesthetic, seeming more like it was something out of Office Space from most angles rather than from the mind of Johnny Ives.

I am really glad to see how forward-thinking the concept looks.

I'm surprised it's only 4 stories. I would of added 3 more stories and added capacity for several more thousand employees. I can easily see them out growing the space very quickly in the next 20 years and possibly building two other circles in the empty spaces beside the circle.

There are still orchards in Cupertino?!

Not for economic reasons. Modest houses on modest lots sell in the seven figures there. Whoever owns the land could make huge money by selling to developers, but presumably the city council has made it clear that they won't approve a zoning change. Apparently, the people there already really want there to still be orchards in Cupertino, if only as a memory of what was.

Sounds like Steve Jobs wowed the city council, but after paying some attention to SV local politics, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the community rallied against this.

In the "Man Who Fell to the Earth", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Fell_to_Earth_(film.... the lead character is an extra terrestrial posing as a man, made a lot of money by being a technologist selling amazing "inventions" from his planet, and has a luxury apartment which turns out to be a spaceship, which is meant to cart water back to his planet, which has run out due to its use in power generation. Maybe Jobs is planning bring natural gas back to his planet?

Wow, such a beautiful campus.

if i didn't enjoy free time so much i'd love to work in this new building :)

I'd have a back up plan for a second nearby city so that once the town councils bike-shedding begins, Steve can just shrug and say "Gee it would have been nice to build it here but..."

for some reason it reminds me of a Panopticon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

Reminds me a bit of IBM's TJ Watson center in NY.

Very cool, very futuristic. That is a place I'd like to be. Importantly, they've said they have a few thousand people at 1IL currently and they're consolidating everyone together. That should benefit the communication and innovation having everyone under one roof able to get together and chat.

In short, I love it. More companies should be so bold.

When I saw that aerial three-quarter image of the building, I started to imagine crossing from one side of the campus to the other via that inner garden. Somehow the burning man city layout popped into my head, along with memories of crossing the vast open middle on foot (not recommended. Only attempted a bicycle-free year once).

What is the advantage to Apple to build in an incorporated city? I understand the need for infrastructure, but what does a tech co like Apple need other than electricity + water + gas? Wouldn't there be less regulation and taxes if they moved to unincorporated territory?

Massive corporate office buildings seem so antiquated to me. Don't people work remotely nowadays? Even when I am on-site I prefer to hold meetings over web share and phone conferences. Meetings you have to walk to never start on time. What a waste.

I bet that Jobs has had a dream about this building for a while. Finally, he gets to do it.

Wow.. reminds me of the kindergarten I used to work at (at a massive scale!) http://www.landezine.com/index.php/2009/07/fuji-kindergarten...

To quote our IT manager "So its an actual walled garden?"

in the LA Times article about the same topic, Steve Wozniak also added his own bits on the land purchased. Scroll down to the Comments section (it's via facebook).

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/06/apple-spa...

What other companies have built beautiful office spaces like this? I count IBM and Epic systems. I hear sas has a great campus as well.

So what would be the new address? Does it mean giving up "1 Infinite Loop"? Any guesses at a replacement?

Is it bigger than the Pentagon?

He seems so tired. Get well Steve. Beautiful building!

I wonder what the radius of that building will be.

Does anyone else get a creepy Dubai vibe reading this? Some of the statements like 'there will be no straight glass' beg the question - is it really worth it?

Simply utopian.