Skip to main content

Apple’s stunning ‘spaceship’ campus looks ready for workers to move in

APPLE PARK May 2017 Drone Tour 4K
Back in September 2014, the cleared land once home to Hewlett-Packard was little more than a field of dust. Today, as the first of 12,000 employees prepare to move in, it’s the location of Apple’s gleaming new headquarters.

Officially called Apple Park but still better known for its “spaceship” nickname given for its futuristic design, a new drone video posted in recent days by Matthew Roberts shows the sprawling, 176-acre Cupertino campus in the final stages of construction.

Related Videos

While at first glance it looks pretty much complete, closer inspection reveals work continuing in a number of areas around the site, including at the Steve Jobs Theater, the company’s subterranean 1,000-seat auditorium featuring a 20-foot-tall glass cylinder, 165 feet in diameter, supporting a metallic carbon-fiber roof.

Apple employees are expected any day now to begin transferring to the distinctive, doughnut-shaped main building, which is wrapped in the world’s largest segments of curved glass and topped off with a covering of solar panels that will help power the campus. The process of moving all 12,000 workers to the new site is expected to take up to six months.

Besides the main building and theater, the tech giant’s new base includes a 100,000-square-foot fitness center to keep Apple’s team in top shape, a research and development facility where Jony Ive and co. will endeavor to cook up the company’s next big success, and expansive landscaped parklands.

Notably, Apple claims its new HQ is the world’s largest naturally ventilated building and is therefore not expected to require heating or air conditioning for nine months of the year.

“Steve’s vision for Apple stretched far beyond his time with us,” Apple boss Tim Cook said in a statement earlier this year. “He intended Apple Park to be the home of innovation for generations to come. The workspaces and parklands are designed to inspire our team as well as benefit the environment. We’ve achieved one of the most energy-efficient buildings in the world and the campus will run entirely on renewable energy.”

Fans of the company, or those with an interest in stunning modern architecture, are invited to drop by Apple Park’s visitors center, which, as you’d expect, includes an Apple Store as well as a cafe.

The design of Apple Park is the work of acclaimed architect Norman Foster, though it was the former Apple boss and co-founder Steve Jobs who drove the ambitious project forward in the years and months leading up to his death in 2011.

Editors' Recommendations

Apple’s antivirus strategy for Mac has gone fully preemptive, but is that enough?
Security and Privacy settings open on a MacBook.

Apple made its Macs even better at fighting malware in recent years, but don't relax just yet.

A recent blog post by Howard Oakley at the Eclectic Light Company details the changes Apple has quietly made in the past six months that mark a distinct change in strategy for protecting Macs, including spots where there are still holes of vulnerability, specifically for some older Macs.

Read more
We finally might know what Apple will call its AR/VR headset
Apple VR Headset Concept by Antonio De Rosa

We have been patiently waiting for Apple to drop its much-anticipated virtual reality headset, and now it seems we're closer than ever. Apple filed some trademark names for its upcoming AR/VR headset, indicating it's one step closer to launch.

The trademarks were filed simultaneously in the U.S., U.K., Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica, and Uruguay. The trademarks protect the names "Reality One," "Reality Pro," and "Reality Processor." Apple used the same law firms it has used in the past in these countries to file the trademarks.

Read more
Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pro just received some good news
Macbook Air (2022) on a stylized background.

It appears that we might see the upcoming 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros sooner than initially thought, complete with the new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips for extra performance capabilities.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the development of these two MacBooks is well underway, meaning that there's a chance Apple might be able to release them shortly.

Read more