In a presentation to the Cupertino, Calif., City Council (see video, below), Jobs said that Apple planned to build a new corporate campus on property purchased over the past few years, mostly from Hewlett-Packard. Jobs said that this land had special meaning to him, because H-P started the process of buying the property back when Jobs was a 13-year-old summer employee at a nearby H-P facility.
The campus, Jobs said, would not look anything like the sprawling office parks of other high tech employers in the area, but rather would seem “like a spaceship landed.”
Indeed, the circular design presented to the City Council looks like something right out of a science fiction movie. “It’s curved all the way around,” Jobs said. “There’s not a straight piece of glass in this building.”
"The word spectacular would be an understatement," commented one City Council member.
Job agreed. "We have a shot at building the best office building in the world," he said.
Inside, the building will have about 288,000 square meters of space, and will house about 12,000 employees. Parking will go underground, with 80 percent of the site landscaped. On part of the property, Jobs plans to bring in apricot trees, in homage to the orchards that filled the site before Hewlett Packard purchased it. The facilities will also include an energy center, which will generate enough electricity to serve as the main source of power for the campus.
Tekla S. Perry is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., she's been covering the people, companies, and technology that make Silicon Valley a special place for more than 40 years. An IEEE member, she holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Michigan State University.