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Apple Park: The History Behind Apple’s $5 Billion Headquarters
Technology firms have engineered incredible growth in the past decade — and they’ve left their mark on urban landscapes by building enormous campuses. A recent example of this can be seen in Apple’s new five billion dollar headquarters located in Cupertino, California.
What looks like a giant spaceship parked up in the middle of suburban America, is actually Apple’s most ambitious project yet and is truly something to behold. Apple Park’s stunning architecture extends across one hundred and seventy five acres of land and serves as an iconic symbol of Apple’s dedication to design, green energy, and the future of technology.
Despite Apple Park’s incredibly futuristic looks, the campus has been a long time in the making with Steve Jobs himself first presenting the ambitious project to the Cupertino City Council back in 2006.
Jobs saw the rapid growth of the company and knew that their current campus at 1 Infinite Loop couldn’t last. So, Apple purchased land formerly owned by Hewlett-Packard; a company very important to Jobs’ history as he worked there as a summer intern.
Purchases of the required land were made through the company Hines Interests, which in at least some cases didn’t disclose that Apple was the ultimate buyer. This is common practice in attempts to arrange the purchase of contiguous land made up of multiple parcels with separate owners, to keep costs from skyrocketing. This was similar to the approach that Disney took in the mid-1960s when they set out to build their Magic Kingdom in Florida.
On June 7, 2011, Jobs presented to the Cupertino City Council, in what is widely known to be one of his final public appearances, details of the architectural design of the new buildings and their surroundings.
