KTVU has reported that a law enforcement source stated an investigation has begun after a person was found dead in a conference room on Apple’s Cupertino campus. Information from any sources is extremely limited at this point, so we’ll withhold speculation until further confirmed reporting is released.
Silicon Valley Business Journal reports that Apple has secured a deal to build another spaceship campus in Sunnyvale, California. The company will purchase Landbank Investments LLC’s planned Central & Wolfe campus which comes in at 777,000-square-feet at Central Expressway and Wolfe Road in Silicon Valley.
In an updated aerial photo published today, Apple gives us our latest look at construction progress on its new ‘Campus 2’ building in Cupertino.
In the photo, we get a closer look at new developments on the main building, as well as the surrounding campus including a planned 1,000 seat auditorium, 300,000 square foot R&D facilities, a parking structure and other buildings separate from the main circular structure. The photos were published to the City of Cupertino’s webpage tracking progress and road closures on the project for the public.
Apple hasn’t updated its planned general project schedule on the City of Cupertino’s website and still plans to complete building construction on Campus 2 by the end of 2016 when it can begin to move in approximately 13,000 of its employees.
We’ve been keeping track of construction progress on Campus 2 with the latest photos, news, and drone flyovers in our timeline here.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HszOdsObT50]
These are just great. Many thanks to Myithz for sending these in every few weeks. Today’s video shows that the actual building of the structure has started after the foundation had been completed last time we checked in mid October.
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Apple’s Campus 2 project continues to make strides with the latest drone video (below) showing the majority of the foundation completed on the massive structure, which Apple CEO Tim Cook has called the ‘Greenest in the World’. You can see the front 2/3rds of the structure is now cemented in with the rear third still dirt and subterranean walls also built along the sides.
The controversial structure which will house 12,000 staff in 2.8M square feet on 176 acres and is estimated to be completed in 2016. Interestingly, even though Apple is covering the construction site with a high green wall, it is updating the 3D flyover of the location in Apple Maps somewhat frequently. The latest looks like it was taken earlier this summer.
You can follow the progress in our Campus 2 story line here.
Thanks Tony!
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Following a number of amateur aerial shots of Apple’s Campus 2 construction popping up on Instagram and elsewhere online, today the City of Cupertino shared our best yet look at progress on the site with an aerial shot of the entire campus. The shot doesn’t just show the main circular “spaceship” structure, but also work starting on the the entire surrounding campus.
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Photo via Foursquare
According to employee tweets and photos, Apple opened a stunning new Caffè Macs employee cafeteria at the corner of Bandley and Alves Dr. in Cupertino this past Tuesday. Located close to the company’s first campus building, Apple received approval to build at this location in early 2012, and after 2 years of work, the new cafeteria is complete.
A crowd-sourced crime-reporting and safety app trialled on selected university campuses has now been rolled out to everyone. Tapshield allows real-time viewing of crime stats and suspicious activity in an area, and allows you to summon help when in trouble.
An award-winning mobile safety app and response dashboard, TapShield uses collaboration and crowd-sourcing to build safer communities & improve response times. Think of TapShield as your social safety network with you wherever you want to go.
The way the app works is that users can report crimes in progress and anything else they spot that concerns them, and those locations and incidents are then automatically shown to other Tapshield users in the area.
When a crime is reported, Tapshield sends a message to campus security when used within one of the participating colleges, and dials 911 when used elsewhere. You also have the option of sending a non-emergency alert to police when you see something that concerns you but which doesn’t justify an immediate emergency response – such as a bunch of street lights out, leaving a path in darkness.
If you have to make a journey that concerns you, you can specify your route and ETA and allow family and friends to follow your journey remotely, raising the alarm if you go off-route or don’t reach your destination when expected.
Finally, the app has a ‘yank’ mode, which automatically sends an alert if headphones are forcibly pulled from the device, such as when your phone is snatched by a thief.
Tapshield is a free download from iTunes.
Via TheNextWeb
Image via Mercury News
A San Jose Mercury News report reveals that Apple is planning to expand its operations to a new Sunnyvale, CA campus. At 290,000 square feet, the Sunnyvale Crossing is a bit smaller than Apple’s previous 350,000 square foot Sunnyvale expansion (though it has one more building than the previous expansion).
Apple is currently in the process of constructing its new “spaceship” headquarters, which is expected to be completed by 2016 and will help alleviate some of the need for these external campuses and allow the company to bring more of its corporate team together in one place. However, the lease on this new space is reportedly somewhere between 7-10 years, so it’s likely that Apple plans to continue using the space for quite some time.
In a tweet, KCBS reporter Ron Cervi shows the groundwork of Apple’s new ‘spaceship’ campus taking shape. Cervi often tweets from his reporting helicopter and caught this shot a few hours ago.
Last time we checked in with the site, it was in the midst of demolition. In this latest photo, the circular foundations of Apple Campus 2 (Apple’s official name for the project) are much more defined. Apple is expected to start new building work at some point this year. The campus is currently planned to open in 2016.
New renders released by the City of Cupertino from Apple’s planning documents provide the most detailed view yet of what life inside the company’s new spaceship headquarters will be like.
Illustrating everything from cafes to car-parks, the renders are intended to provide a feel for what the building will be like to work in, rather than just its appearance as a structure. They also include additional renders of the upper level of the 1,000-seat auditorium.
Full gallery below …
New photos from the San Jose Mercury News today reveal additional details about Apple’s new campus, slated to be completed sometime in either 2015 or 2016. A scale model of the planned building was shown to The Mercury News by Apple’s CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, located at an office on the 175-acre site of Apple’s planned campus. According to Oppenheimer:
Apple today published a report on its website detailing the “Economic and Fiscal Impacts Generated by Apple in Cupertino – Current Facilities and Apple Campus 2.”
Apple notes that the report, which details a number of topics from job creation to construction of its new spaceship campus, was put together by Keyser Marston Associates, Inc. (KMA) for the City of Cupertino under contract with Apple Inc.
With net annual sales in excess of $156 billion, 16,000 employees currently based in the Cupertino area, and annual purchases from local Silicon Valley-based businesses of $4.6 billion, Apple is a cornerstone of the Silicon Valley economy and of the fiscal resources of the City of Cupertino.
Much of the report focuses on the economic impacts and future contributions of Apple’s currently under construction Apple Campus 2. In the report, Apple details how its new campus will “add an estimated 7,400 new high-quality jobs,” increase revenues for the local economy, and enhance tax revenues for the city and surrounding areas. Apple says it will support 24,000 jobs in Cupertino alone when the campus is ready in 2016.
It also detailed investments being made in public improvements surrounding its new campus including infrastructure and utility improvements and its transportation program:
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Apple has just revised its plans for its massive upcoming new headquarters, scheduled to be completed by 2016. The revised plans, known as Submittal 6, focus less on the structure of the building itself, instead highlighting the surrounding land and facilities, showing off new bike paths, larger parking areas, and photos of street renderings.
The parking areas have been increased in capacity from 9,000 to 9,240 in the main lot, and 1,500 to 1,740 in an additional location, the report states. Updated bike access plans include new features such as enhanced bike lanes called “buffered bike lanes,” as well as bike boxes and two-stage turn boxes (images below).
Although there will be an incremental increase in gross office and research and development floor area of approximately 20%, the efficient use of the main site will result in almost tripling the landscaped area. Underground and structured parking will replace 9,220 surface parking spaces – creating almost three times more open space.
Last year we posted a photo that originated from a Pixar employee showing the animation company had renamed its main facility “The Steve Jobs Building” in honor of its co-founder and former CEO. Today, PixarTimes points us to the image above showing a tree on the Pixar campus just outside The Steve Jobs Building that has been recently dedicated to Steve:
Dedicated With Love And Gratitude To
Steve Jobs
Our Partner, Mentor, And Friend
Pixar has honored Jobs’ contributions in others ways too, such as the credits of the 2012 film ‘Brave’ which happened to include the same text as the plaque above.
Steve Jobs was CEO of the animation studio until being acquired by Disney in 2006, in turn making Jobs the largest individual shareholder with a seat on the board of Disney. Jobs was also credited as an executive producer of the 1996 blockbuster Toy Story.
A render by Foster + Partners of Apple’s soon to be constructed Spaceship campus
Following a report earlier this month that Apple’s Spaceship campus project had increased to nearly $5B as lead architect Foster + Partners attempted to trim around a billion from the budget, a new report today claims Apple is now working with the architecture company on other projects. Marketingmagazine claims “sources close to the project” say Foster will soon be assisting Apple with the design of its retail stores:
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Following this morning’s report that Apple’s grand spaceship campus introduced by Steve Jobs in 2011 won’t open until mid-2016, Apple has sent its revised plans to the city of Cupertino this afternoon. The 176-acre campus was originally slated to complete in 2015 after the company was set to start work this year; however, the City of Cupertino still needs to complete an environmental review. Apple notified Cupertino of the time-frame change in the updated project proposal and added, “This schedule may be modified to meet Apple’s business needs.”
Reliable sources recently provided 9to5Mac with official blueprints of Apple Campus 2 that detail and illustrate the mammoth project currently in development. (These are just a few of the confidential images.)
The spaceship-like building, called “Campus 2,” is nearly a mile in circumference. Apple bought the land from HP and other neighbors in Cupertino, Calif., for around $300 million. The company’s late cofounder, Steve Jobs, oversaw the building’s design, while the project’s proposal was his last public appearance (video below).
Solar panels cover the main building’s entire roof, and the images above depict additional outdoor and indoor aspects of the new structure. The exclusive slides named Foster + Partners as one of the architecture firms working on the project, and they cited Arup for consulting engineering, OLIN for landscape architecture, and Davis Langdon for construction. Previous reports indicated that construction is supposed to start later this year.
In related news: Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer sent neighbors brochures recently to solicit feedback on the project.
A previous 9to5Mac gallery featured 100 other high-quality images, and one of the highlights was an auditorium that Apple plans to give presentations at when the facilities open in 2015.
Last time we checked Apple’s plans to bring 3,600 jobs to Austin, Texas with a $304 million investment and the construction of a new campus, the company received approval on the last of several major incentives from city officials. The approval officially initiated an Economic Development Agreement between Apple and the city, but the project was still not 100 percent confirmed.
Reports originally said Apple would build the new campus on 38 acres at West Parmer Lane and Delcour Drive, and today’s report from AustinBusinessJournal confirmed Apple recently purchased land near the address:
Records at the Travis County Clerk’s Office show that McShane Development Co. LLC, through its Riata Vista LP entity, sold three tracts of land to Apple on June 20. The exhibits indicate that the land is in the Milwood Section 20 subdivision near Parmer Lane and Delcour Drive.
The report did not offer any information about how much Apple paid for the land, but the purchase is a good indication Apple is going ahead with its new Austin campus. According to AustinBusinessJournal, McShane CEO James McShane released a press release yesterday on its new vice president who helped make the deal with Apple:
Apple is currently involved in an outreach program to new neighbors in its planned “Campus 2” area. A brochure was mailed this week to residents surrounding the new campus that provided information and invited feedback in a variety of ways. Although the project seems to be a big win for the city of Cupertino, some residents voiced concern about the added traffic and other changes to the area.
We obtained a letter from one of Apple’s new neighbors—here are the takeaways:
- Campus 2, as it is currently called, will not replace the 1 Infinite Loop campus. Instead, it will provide “research facility” office space for an additional 13,000 employees, which is more than 3,000 than 1 Infinite Loop. There is also 300,000 feet of expansion space for future growth.
- Campus 2 will attain LEED certification and will have no manufacturing or heavy industrial activity onsite. Apple has and will continue to take extra steps to reduce auto use by employees. Moreover, the roof of the main building is a huge solar array.
- Campus 2 will not open to the public, so there is no museum or corporate store. :(
- The “world class” auditorium located at the very southern tip of the new campus will host product launches and corporate events.
- The corporate fitness center/recreation center will be located to the north west of the main circular building in a separate structure.
- Infinite Loop will remain the official corporate HQ, so top executives will likely stay behind.
- Apple intends to break ground as soon as Cupertino approves the changes (scheduled for later this year), with plans to start occupying the space in 2015.
Neighbors can fill out the postage paid response card or go to the Cupertino.org website with comments, questions, or concerns.
Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs originally presented the idea of the campus in June (video below) during his last public appearance that occurred a day after the 2011 WWDC.
John Martellaro at MacObserver got his protractor out and used those drawings that the City of Cupertino released this weekend to extrapolate the real size of Apple’s new HQ building. In a word, it is BIG.
Given that comforting sanity check, I measured the diameter of the Apple spaceship as 1615 ft, plus or minus a few ft., depending on where one places the ruler. That’s a radius of 807.5 ft.
The outside measurement on the plans is 760′ but the large outside shader structures could account for the additional size.
Interestingly, that is a bigger footprint than the world’s largest office building, the Pentagon, which at five stories tall, two basement levels and with a smaller courtyard, still has significantly more usable square footage.
Also (using our geometry skillz) plugging the 1615 ft diameter into a perfectly round circle, you get an outside circumference of just under a mile (5074 ft). That means taking some paperwork all the way to HR might be a lunch killer.
Update: Obama Pacman notes that Apple could install 3 full sized Football fields in the courtyard (below).
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