The Official Video of Apple Campus 2: The “Mothership” Has Landed

Apple has posted the official video of “Apple Campus 2”, which is their oddly-shaped UFO headquarters in Cupertino, California. The mothership, as the circular building is called, was designed with Stanford in mind. By this Apple is taking innovation to the office space with a construction that will house 13,000 employees. In the video late Steve Jobs says “we do have a shot of building the best office building in the world”. This massive undertaking will be completed by 2016 with high focus on renewable energy and “green space”.

The original campus

According to Wikipedia, today’s campus is the corporate headquarters of Apple located at One Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California. Its design resembles that of a university with the buildings arranged around green spaces, similar to a suburban business park.

Apple’s headquarters was originally located at Building 1 on 20525 Mariani Ave in Cupertino. It had an area of 850,000 square feet (79,000 m2). Construction of today’s campus began in 1992 and was completed in 1993. Before 1997, activities held on the campus were research and development. With return of Steve Jobs to Apple that year, changes were made to the campus. They increased the number of buildings, and many activities not related to R&D were moved here. Steve Jobs also did other changes, e.g. banning employees’ pets and dramatically improving the cafeteria menu.

Besides the buildings on Infinite Loop, the whole campus occupies additional thirty buildings scattered throughout the city to accommodate its employees. In total, Apple controls more than 3,300,000 square feet (310,000 m2) for its activities in Cupertino.

The new Apple Campus 2

In April 2006, Steve Jobs announced to the city council of Cupertino that Apple had acquired nine contiguous properties to build a second campus, the Apple Campus 2, located one mile east of the existing facility. Apple has had a presence in Cupertino since 1977, which is why the they decided to stay there.

On June 7th 2011, Steve Jobs presented to Cupertino City Council details of the architectural design of Apple Campus 2. Here is what Wikipedia says:

“The new campus, on a site now totalling 175 acres (0.71 km2), is planned to house up to 13,000 employees in one central four-storied circular building of approximately 2,800,000 square feet (260,000 m2), which will include a café for 3,000 sitting people, be surrounded by extensive landscaping, and offer parking both underground and in a parking structure. Media reports widely described the new structure as “spaceship”. Other facilities include a 1,000 seat auditorium, 300,000 square feet (28,000 m2) of R&D facilities, a fitness center, an orchard, and a dedicated generating plant as primary source of electricity.”

Here’s the video from this presentation. You should have a look since it’s historic: This was an important milestone and it was just four months before Steve Jobs passed away. He looks quite tired in the video, clearly weakened by his cancer. This is the last Steve Jobs footage.