After several delays, Apple’s sprawling new campus, dubbed “Apple Park,” will finally open in April this year, the iPhone maker said on Wednesday.
Although the first wave of employees will begin moving into the new Cupertino headquarters this spring, it will take about six months for all of the 12,000-plus workers to make the transition, Apple said. Construction will run through the summer.
Apple’s high standards contributed to delays on the project, former construction managers said. One door handle, for example, took at least a year-and-a-half to design, according to a former construction manager.
But Apple believes that’s fine.
“Steve invested so much of his energy creating and supporting vital, creative environments,” Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, said in a statement.
“We have approached the design, engineering and making of our new campus with the same enthusiasm and design principles that characterize our products.” he said.
Here is a list of features the new Apple Park boasts of:
- Popularly known as the ‘Spaceship’ campus, owing to it’s shape and size, Apple Park is spread over 176 acres of area in California’s Santa Clara Valley, and is said to reflect the childhood California landscapes Jobs grew up with.
- It is often cited as the last thing Jobs built before his death, and was built at an reported cost of $5 billion, though the figure has not yet been confirmed by Apple.
- It is built to accommodate almost 13,000 people.
- The whole campus has been designed to run on renewable energy
- The park is fitted with 17 megawatts of rooftop solar panels, the largest on-site solar installation in the world, the Verge reported.
- The construction is also naturally ventilated, and is said to require no heating or air conditioning for nine months of the year.
- The main building is 2.8 million-square-foot in area, and is in the shape of a giant ring. It allegedly boasts of the world’s largest piece of curved glass.
- The campus has a built-in theatre that has the capacity to seat 1,000 people. Apple has decided to name the theatre ‘Steve Jobs Theatre’ as a special tribute to the former co-founder.
- Apple reportedly planted almost 9,000 trees in areas surrounding the campus, so that employees have lush grassy slopes and ‘meadows’ to jog and walk in, the Mirror reported.
- Reports also claim that the buttons on the elevators in apple Park are designed to look like the ‘Home’ button of the iPhone7.
- The campus will include a visitors centre with an Apple Store, along with a cafe, a fitness centre for Apple employees and secure research and development facilities.
(With inputs from Reuters)
Feature Image Source: Reuters
