New Yorker Criticizes New Apple Headquarters Design

POST

MAIL

Posted September 27, 2011 at 6:24pm by iClarified

The New Yorker's Paul Goldberger joins the LA Times in criticizing Apple's design for its new headquarters.

Foster has proposed a gargantuan glass-and-metal ring, four stories high, with a hole in the middle a third of a mile wide. The building, which will house upwards of twelve thousand employees, will have a circumference of a mile, and will be so huge that you won't really be able to perceive its shape, except from the air. Like everything Foster does, it will be sleek and impeccably detailed, but who wants to work in a gigantic donut? Steve Jobs, speaking to the Cupertino City Council, likened the building to a spaceship. But buildings aren't spaceships, any more than they are iPhones.

So why is Foster's design troubling, maybe even a bit scary? The genius of the iPhone, MacBook, iPad, and other Apple products is that they are tools that function well and happen to be breathtakingly beautiful. (Last year, I wrote about the design for the new Apple store on the Upper West Side.) A building is also a tool, but of a very different sort. In architecture, scale-the size of various parts of a building in proportion to one another and to the size of human beings-counts for a lot. With this building, there seems to be very little sense of any connection to human size. Flexibility is a hallmark of the iPad, and it counts in architecture, too, but how much flexibility is there in a vast office governed entirely by geometry? For all of Foster's sleekness, this Apple building seems more like a twenty-first-century version of the Pentagon.

You can read Goldberger's full review of the proposed design at the link below...

Read More [via Fortune]

New Yorker Criticizes New Apple Headquarters Design

Follow iClarified

David - September 28, 2011 at 3:28pm

Only seeing it from an exterior rendering, I have to say, simply -- I think it's beautiful. I'd love to work there.....

Reply · Like

john - September 28, 2011 at 1:25am

mmmmm doughnut....

Tjp - September 27, 2011 at 11:50pm

I like the aesthetic. And it is appropriate for the location. Someone who comes from a land of infinitely tall spires that normal people never see over, where one blocks the view of the next and where the risk of earthquakes is low, so building high is not a problem; those people are have a different frame of reference. I like the buildings proportions to the representation of the circle, symbol of the infinite, appropriate for a company whose headquarters are a 1 infinite loop. There is enduring beauty, as well as an almost cosmic humor to the elegant and simple design, friendly to its neighbors as well as employees, and the environment. A lasting tribute to the corporate vision and those that guide that vision.

Nick - September 27, 2011 at 8:20pm

He completely misses the big point of the design, they wanted this to be a campus for all the workers and have a lot of outdoor space, which is exactly what they have in the center. I don't understand why people even care what kind of design they go with, it's their building and that's the way they wanted it. I personally like the idea simply because it offers that space in the center of the building for activities and for the workers to get out of the office for a bit (yeah I know you can go out of any building, but this building has a designated place for it that is big enough for a large amount of people all at one time).

Nobo1 - September 27, 2011 at 11:21pm

Right on Nick! I hear you