Check out the crazy attention to detail at Apple’s new San Francisco store

SAN FRANCISCO — Look carefully at the cracks in the sidewalk around Apple’s new flagship store in San Francisco. They all line up with architectural elements of the store.

Some are continuous with the metal panels on the exterior walls. Some line up with the windows, and the huge glass panels that make up the 42-foot high front door. Some of the cracks are continuous with the stone floor tiles inside the store.

In turn, the joints in the floor line up with panels on the wall, which line up with the lighting panels on the ceiling.

In fact, most of the lines in the store — the edges of the glass balconies, cutouts in the middle of the tables, the edges of shelves and drawers — all line up with other elements of the store.

Some of these lines run continously from the sidewalk in front of the store all the way through to the tree-lined plaza in the back. It’s a bit crazy, when you examine it, and very, very difficult to pull off.

A construction professional in San Francisco, who insisted on remaining anonymous, said it looks easy on architectural plans but is difficult in practice.

“There’s a million-and-one unknowns that can screw things up,” he said. “Utility lines, pipes and structural elements. There’s all this stuff that comes up in construction that you can’t predict. You can throw money at it, but it’s always hard to get exactly right.”

This might help explain the $23.6 million price tag and the multiple revisions to building permits in mid-construction. This “makes us think that there were a lot of changes made mid-project,” wrote the BuildZoom blog which broke down the estimated building costs.

Designed by Foster and Partners, the spacious, light-filled store features a cantilevered second floor, a pair of $1 million glass staircases and a “Genius Grove” repair area with a mini orchard of live Ficus trees.

Out back there’s an art-filled plaza with a 50-foot living green wall and public Wi-Fi. The store is as much a meeting place as a commercial spot, and will feature regular talks and performances by experts and artists.

This is the front of the store, looking out onto the sidewalk. The contraction joint in the sidewalk lines up perfectly with a joint between the tiles on the floor inside the store.

On the side of the store, the sidewalk joints line up with the windows.

The tables on the ground floor are aligned with the cracks on the floor.

And many of the interior shelving units are lined up with metal panels on the wall.

Just about everywhere you look, the joints and cracks are aligned.

This isn’t easy to see, but the top of the glass balcony on the mezzanine floor aligns perfectly with a joint between the huge glass panels at the front of the store.

The lines and joints on the mezzanine floor line up with those on the ground floor below. See how the tiles on the mezzanine are aligned with the tiles on the ground floor, which are in line with the sidewalk.

The alignment of all the architectural elements extends all the way to the ceiling and the lighting panels…

… and around the outside of the building. It’s not easy to see in this shot, but the lines in the sidewalk are continuous with the exterior panels and the solar panels on the roof.

It’s one big perfect grid. Imagine what’s going on at the Spaceship.

Leander Kahney

Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.

Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.

He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.

Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.

Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.

Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.

Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.

Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.

Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.

He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.

Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.

You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.