The designs for Apple's new "spaceship" campus in Cupertino have had the tech community excited since they were first released in 2011.
Norman Foster, founder of Foster + Partners, the firm behind the futuristic design, sat down with Architectural Record to provide more details about the forthcoming building.
According to Foster, the circular design of the building will keep employees from ever having to see a car, creating a kind of idyllic California landscape.
They decided on the design after studying enclosed urban spaces, like squares in London, that have small parks in the center.
"These studies finally morphed into a circular building that would enclose the private space in the middle—essentially a park that would replicate the original California landscape, and parts of it would also recapture the orchards of the past," he said to Architectural Record. "The car would visually be banished, and tarmac would be replaced by greenery, and car parks by jogging and bicycle trails."
Putting the parking lots underground will help contribute to the feeling of being immersed in nature.
"You won't look out of your window and see row after row of parked cars," Foster said. "And of course you have the benefit of jogging and cycling trails—more than a thousand bikes will be kept on the site—and also pathways and landscaping connections."
Foster explained that Steve Jobs was inspired by the large open spaces at Stanford University.
"The reference point for Steve [Jobs] was always the large space on the Stanford campus—the Main Quad—which Steve knew intimately," he said. "Also, he would reminisce about the time when he was young, and California was still the fruit bowl of the United States. It was still orchards."
The virtually car-less campus will certainly be a welcome break for the tech workers braving horrific Silicon Valley traffic every day.
