14 DAY TRIAL // From the mile-long piece of the New Yorker’s profile of Jony Ive, we learn that Apple’s industrial designer is heavily invested in the Spaceship campus originally pitched by Steve Jobs to the City of Cupertino, and subsequently approved by the city’s council.
Construction on the ring-shaped building is well underway. The current phase involves that the construction crew meticulously arrange huge precast “void slabs” of concrete in what can only be described as a huge puzzle. But the first draft did not include a circular design, Ive reveals in the interview.
Trilobal form factor
Ive tells his interviewers, “We stood by a scale model. Ive said that, in an earlier iteration, the campus was ‘trilobal.’ I imagined a three-petalled flower, or the symbol for radioactivity. The single loop seemed to reflect the imperial part of the studio’s spirit of imperial solicitousness.”
Apple eventually settled on the circular shape that everyone instantly described as a spaceship, or a saucer. Some of the early jokes involving the project, as Jobs was pitching it to the City of Cupertino, suggested that the building might one day take off into space.
The greenest building in the world
Apple has often made the case for its Campus 2 building calling it the most ambitious project of its kind from a plurality of viewpoints, including ecology. The building will be powered entirely by renewable energy, Apple said.
Several efforts in this direction have already been made. The last one cost Apple $850 million for a solar array that will help power the campus. The project will be finalized towards the end of 2016.
Progress on the erection of the building is being reported on a weekly basis at cupertino.org. Apple is still engaged in the earthwork stages, but most of the foundation has been laid down.