Apple Park, Steve Jobs’ Vision, Opens to Employees In April

Five and a half years ago, Steve Jobs stood in front of the Cupertino City Council and made a presentation to the councilors seeking approval to build the next Apple headquarters on the North-East edge of the City. This enormous structure became known as the “spaceship” due to its design, and while planning and construction have taken some time, Apple staff will begin to move into the building in under two months.

Apple, in a new press release, this week announced that its new 175-acre campus in Cupertino will be called Apple Park and is set to open in April. It will take six months to migrate Apple’s employees to the spaceship-like building, which Apple boasts runs entirely on renewable energy.

The circular building, which is one mile east of the company’s current Infinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino, California, is the brainchild of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs. He hoped it would be “the best office building in the world.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook had the following to say:

Steve’s vision for Apple stretched far beyond his time with us. 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.

The 175-acre facility has the capacity to house more than 12,000 employees, and is designed to be very energy-efficient with a 17MW on-site rooftop solar installation system. It is also the largest naturally ventilated building in the world, with projections estimating that it will require no heating or air-conditioning systems for nine months of the year.

Apple has also touted its environmental-friendly attitude by saying that the ring-shaped campus replaces 5 million-square-feet of asphalt and concrete with more than 9,000 native and drought-resistant trees, an orchard, a pond and a meadow

Steve Jobs saw this as a “center for creativity and collaboration” – creating a huge green space in the city, within and around the 260,000-square meter main building which is encased using the world’s largest panels of curved glass.

In a fitting tribute to founder and visionary Steve Jobs, Apple will name the theatre on the new campus the “Steve Jobs Theater” – set to open later this year, this will likely be the venue for many future keynote addresses and product launches.

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