10 Incredible Facts About Apple’s New Campus
Credit: Next RealityFor about 25 years Apple has made its home at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California. But now Apple has a new headquarters: Apple Park. Apple Park is sometimes referred to as “the spaceship” or Apple Campus 2. It’s a state of the art campus featuring unique glass buildings including a circular main building dubbed the Ring. Despite its popularity, few have stepped foot inside the incredible new campus. Use the right arrow to browse ten amazing facts about Apple’s new headquarters.
10 Apple Park Has a Cool Custom Address
The original Apple headquarters was located at 1 Infinite Loop, which is pretty cool. Apple Park (sometimes called Apple Campus 2) has a unique address too: 1 Apple Park Way, Cupertino, California.
Of course, it wasn’t easy getting the space needed to build Apple Park. Since Apple’s such a big company they can’t just go about buying property for cheap. If Apple were revealed as the buyer, prices would likely have been raised and its plans for a new campus wouldn’t have remained secret. So to keep things under wraps and the price (somewhat) lower, Apple made the purchase through Hines Interests. Hines is a private company that develops and invests in real estate. It was founded in 1957.
9 Apple Park Cost an Estimated $5 Billion
Despite being purchased through a private entity to keep costs low, Apple Park is anything but cheap. According to Bloomberg, the project cost over $5 billion. The original budget for the campus was said to be under $3 billion. It’s estimated the land cost around $160 million.
Take a look at this estimated breakdown* of different associated costs:
- Ring (Main Building): $425 million
- Apple Park Visitor Center: $80-110 million
- Visitor Parking Garage: $26 million
- Steve Jobs Theater: $180 million
- Wellness Center: $15 million
*Estimates based on a number of different sources including Fortune, Wikipedia, and BuildZoom.
8 Apple Park’s Main Building Has a 1 Mile Circumference
Apple Park is huge. According to Wikipedia the main building—called the Ring—has a circumference of one mile. And Wired reports it features a three-quarter mile walkway along the inner border.
The Ring also features the largest curved-glass panels in the world. In fact, over 3,000 glass panels form the four-story building. Each pane is almost 50 feet wide.
7 It’s 2.8 Million Square Feet
Not only does it have a crazy long perimeter, but it’s also just plain spacious. The Ring’s 1,615' diameter is larger than the Pentagon (1,566') and the height of the Empire State Building (1,250').
For comparison, the White House is approximately 55,000 square feet and Googleplex (Google’s headquarters) is 2,000,000 square feet.
Despite its large footprint, the Ring’s gigantic courtyard shaves off a lot of square footage. The Pentagon, for example, has a square footage of approximately 6.6 million.
6 It Has 14,200 Parking Spaces
The campus is meant to accommodate over 12,000 employees. So naturally it needs a lot of parking spaces. The city of Cupertino requires that the campus have at least 11,000 parking spaces. There are at least 700 electric vehicle charging stations. 350 parking spaces are for the auditorium.
5 Apple Park Was Designed Based on Steve Jobs’ Conception
The futuristic campus was a product of Steve Jobs’ imagination, brought to life by the renown British architect Norman Foster.
The spaceship-like Ring is four stories above ground, with another three stories underground. The campus is composed of eight separate buildings (not including the nine small atriums) and the interior courtyard has fruit trees representing the orchards of California.
All of the campus walls are made entirely of glass. Some Apple employees have been walking into the walls, which has resulted in some very interesting calls to 911. Apple has since added stickers to help prevent such accidents.
Apple Park is intended to be 80% green space. The courtyard features 30 acres of green space and an artificial pond. It has over 9,000 trees of 309 varieties. And some of the trees act as a natural fence.
A historical barn came with the purchase of the land; it was declared a historical site in 2004. It was taken apart during construction, and reassembled in a different area on the campus. It’s used storage of tools and landscaping supplies.
4 Steve Jobs Theater Houses the World’s Tallest Free-Standing Glass Elevator
This 1000-seat auditorium was named in the innovative co-founder’s honor. A report from Business Insider says each leather seat (or each row of seats, they weren’t sure) cost $14,000.
The overall building is like an Apple Store and the Ring combined. It’s a cylindrical glass design with a carbon fiber roof. In fact, it’s both the “largest carbon fiber roof” and the “largest glass-supported structure” in the world according to Wikipedia.
But that’s not the only world records it holds. The building also includes a unique glass elevator that rotates as it moves vertically. The elevator is the tallest of its kind according to Foster + Partners.
3 Apple Park Has Its Own Gym, 1000 Bikes, and 7 Cafés
Up to 20,000 employees can use the 100,000 square foot Wellness Center on campus. The facility is fully equipped with fitness equipment, showers and changing rooms, and more.
Employees can opt to use the employee buses, drive their cars (the roads are all underground), or ride their bikes. There’s parking for 2,000 bicycles. In addition, Apple has 1,000 bikes for employees to use.
Apple Park has seven cafés. The largest café has seating for 3,000 and utilizes three floors. Even Apple’s new visitor center features its own café.
2 Visit the Two-Story Visitor Center
Speaking of the new visitor center, it might be worth checking out for yourself. It has merchandise that can only be found at Apple Park, including hats, bags, and t-shirts. It also has an awesome model of the campus that can be viewed and interacted with through an augmented reality (AR) app on iPad.
1 It Has "Breathing" Concrete
Apple likes to tout how green the company is and Apple Park is no different. Each floor is separated by a “breathing,” hollow slab of concrete. The slabs can weigh as much as 60,000 pounds. These slabs are both the floor and ceiling, and a natural HVAC system for the adjacent floors.
Also, they eliminated the need for a traditional HVAC system for nine months out of the year. This is because the concrete allows air to flow in and out of the building freely.
The entire campus is designed to eventually operate on 100% renewable energy. And according to Apple, Apple Park is “Home to one of the most energy-efficient buildings in the world.”
Solar panels on the campus’ roof generate 75% of the daytime power and fuel cells make up the other 25%. This amounts to about 21 megawatts of power during peak times.
? Apple Park Holds Many More Secrets
Of course, these are just a few notable facts about Apple Park. There are many things we don’t know and some that weren’t mentioned. For example, Steve Jobs famously insisted on no opening windows which he thought would ruin the aesthetic appeal of the design.
There is also a research & development facility managed by Jony Ive that likely holds many future product prototypes and secrets. And who knows what goes on in the floors below ground..
One thing is for certain, Apple has made its dent in the universe more than once. And many people are eager to see what new products and innovations come out of Apple Park Way.