May 5, 2024

LATimes Criticizes Apple's New Headquarters Design

Posted September 12, 2011 at 4:11pm by iClarified · 6768 views
The LATimes has published an article criticizing Apple's plan for a new headquarters calling it a 'retrograde cocoon'. Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times Architecture Critic says the new campus will "wrap its workers in a suburban setting, removing the feeling of a collective metropolitan realm."

Though the planned building has a futuristic gleam - Jobs told the council "it's a little like a spaceship landed" - in many ways it is a doggedly old-fashioned proposal, recalling the 1943 Pentagon building as well as much of the suburban corporate architecture of the 1960s and '70s. And though Apple has touted the new campus as green, its sprawling form and dependence on the car make a different argument.

Hawthorne continues to say that a car-dependent approach to planning might have made sense in the 1970s but it will seem "irresponsible or worse by 2050."

The city of Cupertino has said 'There is no chance that we're saying no' to Apple's new mothership campus; however citizens have raised concerns about traffic and environmental effects.

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