121–130 of 221 posts
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
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Speaking of his ego. He must be pissed that he couldn't get that small patch of real estate in the lower left corner. The neighbours have made a powerful enemy ;]
If you take a closer look at the area, you can see they'll actually houses rather than office parks. They actually appear impressively dense by California standards. It's a lot harder to buy people's houses than a corporation's floors.
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Lots of apricot trees... perhaps the odd McIntosh Apple? [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntosh_%28apple%29
I grew up in Ontario, where McIntosh are king (and deliciously awesome!). I was surprised, when I moved, that a lot of people didn't know that the MacIntosh computer was actually named after this apple (trademark, or something, prevented them from using "McIntosh")
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'…
Isolation and centralization is useful for the corporation; they have more control over physical security, can manage it so employees tend to interact only with other employees, and it costs a lot less to have space for 12,000 employees off the interstate than to have them downtown (if Silicon Valley towns even have "downtowns;" I know far-flung Miami exurbs usually don't.)
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 c…
Just looking at the proposed plans and comparing to Google Maps, I'd give a rough guestimate of 1100 ft for the building's diameter. So, that's about 3450 ft in circumference. That means a single degree of arc would cover about 960 ft. If each pane of glass were 10x48 and flat (as long as the building is tall), then they would form a 7200-sided polygon, and the angle between them would be 179.95 degrees, or a deflect…
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.
Has Apple found a way to make the sun shine from the North? Otherwise I think there will be rooms that are better than others in the round spaceship, too.
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 l…
He did point out a couple of times that they're the largest tax payer in Cupertino and while they wanted to stay, they've go a couple of miles up the road to the next city if they needed to. Also note the councillors asked when they'd be breaking ground so they could start taxing them on it. Apple wouldn't have to look hard to get big incentives to hop over the city boundary, and they'll keep reminding the council th…
I lived in Menlo Park for a year before moving to SF, and was struck by how anti-development the Menlo Park and Palo Alto governments (and ordinary citizens) were. Perhaps Cupertino is different.
And, this proposal is pretty damn cool. Underground parking? That's fabulous.
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Has Apple found a way to make the sun shine from the North? Otherwise I think there will be rooms that are better than others in the round spaceship, too.
Maybe there's "One more thing…" about it, and the whole thing rotates . You know, I wouldn't be entirely surprised, either.
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.
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'…
Buildings will get so large that they are act as their own cities, creating space that can be returned to ecological use. Such buildings would be so large as to need their own rail systems.
But the problem is living spaces being separate from working spaces. I do hope that buildings like this get closely integrated into mass transportation. Not every couple work at the same place with their kids at the corporate school. If public transportation is not very intelligently integrated, the desolation of the parking lots that this beautiful building replaces will continue in the social dimension. From the presentation it seems as if this will be addressed by buses.