If everything goes according to plan, Apple will complete its new $5 billion ‘spaceship’ campus this year. It’s been a long time coming.
Steve Jobs once said that the new campus meant Apple had “a shot at building the best office building in the world.”
Fast forward to today, and the latest footage shows that most of the earthwork, started in 2014, has been completed. Now construction workers have started to install large panels of curved glass on what the company has described as the “greenest building on the planet.”
When Apple’s Campus 2 is finished, it will house more than 13,000 employees over 18 acres, and it will include a massive fitness center, as well as a state-of-the-art auditorium for Apple keynote presentations.
Here’s a look at how far Apple’s new campus has come, and what it will look like when it’s all finished.
Now, Apple only needs to finish the building, which it will do by 'late 2016,' barring any additional setbacks.
Apple / Cupertino City Council
The building's structure has been nearly completed, according to the latest aerial image provided to the city of Cupertino by Apple.
Glass makes up the majority of the exterior of Campus 2, and was a major part of Jobs' original design.
'We've got an auditorium, cause we put on presentations, much like we did yesterday but we have to go to San Francisco to do them,' Jobs said in 2011.
Apple / City of Cupertino
This is the most detailed depiction of where everything will eventually end up. Note the fairly large fitness center in the northwest corner of the lot, the ample parking near the freeway, and the corporate auditorium with direct access from the road.
Apple / Cupertino City Council
HP
HP's advanced products campus was significantly more architecturally conventional than what Apple's building. Apple tore the building down in 2013.
Youtube / Cupertino City Council
Apple first tipped that it wanted to build a big campus in 2006, before the iPhone came out. But the firm plans that the company continues to follow were revealed in 2011, by former CEO Steve Jobs, in one of his last public appearances, at a Cupertino City Council meeting. 'It's a little like a spaceship landed,' Jobs said. Watch the video here.
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