At Apple’s HQ there’s a shop that sells t-shirts, pens, mugs and other logo goods. One is a t-shirt that says, “I visited the mothership.”
Here’s the new mothership: a mega campus that Steve Jobs is proposing to build in the heart of Cupertino, the town he went to school in as a boy. It’s also where he and Wozniak founded Apple in the mid-70s.
Here are some pictures of the massive new building to house 13,000 Apple employees:
The new mothership would supplement, not replace Apple’s current campus at One Infinite Loop. But where the Loop houses about 3,000 employees, the mothership would be home to 13,000.
Jobs said there wouldn’t be one flat piece of glass in the place. It would be very expensive to build. Apple has learned a lot from its stores, Jobs said.
There’s a cafeteria that feeds 3,000 people at one sitting. That’s the kind of scale you need when you have 13,000 people, Jobs said.
80% of the new campus would be green space, Jobs said. The land is currently office buildings and big asphalt parking lots. It was previously owned by Hewlett-Packard, which sold it to Apple as it downsized. Jobs said the parking lots would be replaced with parkland and about 3,000 new trees.
There’s more trees in the mothership’s central park area. “I think we have a shot at building the best office building in the world,” Jobs said. “I really do think architecture students will come here to see this, it could be that good.”
Here is where it is situated in Cupertino. Apple’s current HQ is to the left. If you’ve been there, you get an idea of the size. One Infinite Loop is a pretty big campus.
As well as the round central office building, there would be a four-story parking structure (the long rectangular building at the bottom). Most of the parking is underground, Jobs said.
Jobs said there would a power plant (the smaller trapezoid at the bottom) that ran on natural gas and other green sources. The grid would be used for backup. There’s also an auditorium (for keynotes), a gym, and “testing” buildings (the cluster of buildings along the right).
Jobs said Apple wants to break ground next year and have it ready by 2015. The city council asked what’s in it for the residents of Cupertino? One suggested Appel provide free WiFi, another asked for an Apple retail store. Jobs didn’t make any promises.
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 is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
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.
72 responses to “Pictures of Apple’s New Mega Mothership Campus”
“Jobs said there wouldn’t be one flat piece of glass int he place.”
What about bathroom mirrors? They’re glass, and they need to be flat, or you get a funhouse effect. :p
“The city council asked what’s in it for the residents of Cupertino? One suggested Appel provide free WiFi, another asked to an Apple retail store.”
Err how about 13,000 new jobs plus all the support jobs (gardeners, kitchen workers, window cleaners…….). Everyone wants free stuff currently.
Perhaps this will be Steve’s last erection.
Nice ring to it. “the mothership”Â
Reality distortion field mirrors.
No mirrors. Â Think Photo Booth.
So they plan to increase employment by 40% and then reduce “surface parking” by 90%…So i take it underground parking will be implemented as well? Otherwise looks like everyone would be  carpooling…
Who is the architect? I heard sometime ago that Norman Foster was in charge to design the future “Apple city” …
No parking??
I’m disappointed. The building should have looked like their logo from the air.
Underground.
Actually, this won’t be the mothership.
But it will be visible from outer space so that the mothership will know where to land, because crop circles weren’t good enough.
Would be a bitch if you had to get to a meeting on the other side… unless it has the great glass elevator
The iRing?Â
Where is the arboreal maze?Â
Yes, some members of the council were asking some very stupid questions, they looked star struck.
Yes, Foster + Partners
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar…
http://www.fosterandpartners.c…
Norman Foster pod cars discussed for the site.
http://www.9to5mac.com/40341/n…
Anyone think this could be the reason for purchasing all those glass cutters a few months back?
It’s funny that most of what would said in this 2011 meeting was also said back in the 2010 meeting, almost to the word.
http://www.9to5mac.com/37842/a…
Now THAT’S funny.
You guys ever READ an article before you post, or did you just look at the pretty pictures?
“there would be a four-story parking structure (the long rectangular building at the bottom).”
“. . . plus all the support jobs (gardeners, kitchen workers, window cleaners…….). Everyone wants free stuff currently. “
The building does all that wirelessly every day when it syncs with the mothership in orbit.
Yeah, probably some variant of the iPad wherever a mirror would be.
I think when the trees bloom it will.
Hmmm, a giant round building and no flat glass, but the parking building is a square rectangle??? Tsk, tsk.
There will be an app to get people to and from work.
…again, no. There will be an app for that.
Good grief…it’s a walled garden! He just can’t help himself.
There aren’t 13,000 new jobs, but current jobs that would be transfered from other buildings to this one building. In today’s economic climate, KEEPING 13,000 jobs is a good thing, but, I rather hope the economy will be greatly improved by the time this thing is built.Â
The building needs a great, tall, thin spire in the center of the interior garden. That would give the building some lift and presence. If we really want to build something extraordinary, I would tilt the spire at 37°19?3? to make the whole building into a huge sun dial.Â
:-)
I believe they really got the design from self-taught futurist Jacque Fresco, a Florida-based engineer, designer and inventor who’s built his life around forward thinking…
watch the documentary Future by Design…
what’s in it for the residents??!? how selfish! the fact that they are even IN cupertino to begin with is PRIZE enough! smh!
what are they going to make their, androids?
I think the real surprise will come when the structure has been built, inspected, all tests completed and past. The Apple Mothership when given the word from the big “J” will lift up into the air, past the litosphere, stratosphere, the exosphere , and into orbit around earth. Then for the biggest surprise of all once in orbit the Mothership will begin beaming MAC users on board. Then finally all the Windows users will be left behind o earth to experience the RAPTURE!
@f88b3339a6cc7a144e149e000fbf547b:disqus ite7000 – Love it!At that size there is just no need to have curved glass as there is probably only a .001 degree change at each pane. There will still be a join line, I don’t think Steve intends casts a single circle of glass that big!
“One Ring to Bind Them”
Well, Apple could decide to setup production back in the US, instead of fuelling China’s growth. This would create 10s of thousands of jobs to start with.
Why a circle and not the apple logo? This is the perfect opportunity to brand the world.