Apple CEO Steve Jobs has presented new plans for a spectacular new circular-shaped head office for the technology giant in Cupertino, California, that will hold 12,000 employees.
Jobs wants to build the larger office on former Hewlett-Packard property and has already purchased almost 100 acres from the company because Apple is growing ‘like a weed’, he said.
The Silicon Valley building, which Apple plans to move into by 2015 and start building next year, will be formed of one huge piece of curved glass if the proposal to Cupertino City Council gets a green signal. “We do have a shot at building the best office building in the world,” he said to council members. “I really do think architecture students will come here to see this.”
The company’s current office can only fit around 2,600 people so Apple is renting buildings to house more than 9,000 other employees locally, reported the International Business Times. The new structure would cover 150 acres and be in addition to the main campus at 1 Infinite Loop.
“It will be a pretty amazing building,” Jobs said in a 20-minute presentation to council members. “It will be like a spaceship landed.”
Jobs said Apple is the largest taxpayer in Cupertino and they would not like to move away from the city – as it ‘wouldn’t be good for Cupertino.
He plans for 80 per cent of the area to be landscaped and for the campus to have its own energy centre as a main power source, as well as an auditorium and research and development centre. The parking will be underground.
Impressed council members were eager to compliment Jobs on the ‘spectacular’ plans, reported the Cupertino Couriter. Described by the San Fransisco Weekly as a ‘massive glass doughnut’, it will have a big courtyard in the centre and use natural gas as the primary power source.
The four-storey building has been compared to the British intelligence agency GCHQ’s head office in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, which holds around 5,500 staff. Jobs, 56, is worth an astonishing $8.3billion, lives in Palo Alto, California, and has four children.
