Apple Campus 2 - page 2

Apple is still moving forward to build its $5 billion, 176-acre “spaceship” Campus 2 headquarters, expected to open in three years in Cupertino, California..

Critics have been attacking it since Apple CEO Steve Jobs first proposed it to the Cupertino City Council. And since that poignant moment, which was Jobs’s last public appearance, the campus project has evolved and changed. As I write this, the old HP buildings on the property are being demolished.

Here’s what we know about the spaceship campus so far, and also what the critics have been saying.

This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine 

Architecture hasn’t really ever been important in the brick and mortar-averse tech industry. It wasn’t all that long ago that digital utopians proclaimed physical geography dead altogether, with a vocal minority apparently pleased to leave the actual world behind them and embrace the cyberspace of William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the technological breakthroughs of Silicon Valley have advanced almost inversely to the region’s architecture. In a brave new world of lush rolling hills and the always impressive San Francisco Bay, the most that the majority of companies have managed to come up with are drab industrial parks filled with two-story, cubicle-lined buildings.

Yesterday we reported that the Cupertino City Council unanimously approved Apple’s plan to build its new ‘spaceship’ headquarters, officially called “Campus 2.” Tim Cook tweeted his enthusiasm after the approval was granted, calling the future campus “our home for innovation and creativity for decades to come.”

Today a video of the city council’s press conference was released with speeches from Cupertino’s mayor and Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer. “This is a very special moment for us at Apple,” said Oppenheimer. “We have put a tremendous amount of love and energy into this campus and we can’t wait to get started building it.”

Construction on the 2.8 million square-foot headquarters and 100-acre plot of land is scheduled to begin this year. The final set of permits Apple needs will be reviewed on November 19th.

Dan Whisenhunt was visibly moved when speaking of his former employer Steve Jobs in front of the Cupertino City Council.

“A little more than two years ago, Steve shared his excitement about this project,” said Whisenhunt, Apple’s director of real estate and facilities, his voice breaking slightly. “It’s a campus to inspire innovation and collaboration between some of the finest engineers in the world.”

Just 10 days after the anniversary of the co-founder’s death, the giant “spaceship” campus is closer to landing in the city of Cupertino, which has a population of just over 60,000.

Whisenhunt’s speech enlivened a meeting that dragged on over four-and-a-half-hours–much longer than usual, Mayor Orrin Mahoney said–where locals fretted over the minutia of every intersection that might tangle the already clogged Silicon Valley commute. In the end, the council unanimously voted to OK the project. It still has one more hurdle to clear before Apple can break ground.

Apple submitted a new proposal, dubbed Submittal 6, for it’s super futuristic circular spaceship campus in Cupertino. The revision includes new details like bike and pedestrian paths, enhancements to street areas, and parking spaces for the huge project, which is behind schedule and $2 billion over budget. The current move-in estimate is in the summer of 2016, a date that continues to show up in the lastest revision.