Critic Pans Apple's New Campus As a Retrograde Cocoon 332
theodp writes "LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne isn't exactly bullish on Apple's proposed new headquarters, which will hold 12,000 Apple employees in its 2.8 million sq ft. Described by Apple as 'a serene and secure environment' for its employees, Hawthorne says the new campus 'keeps itself aloof from the world around it to a degree that is unusual even in a part of California dominated by office parks. The proposed building is essentially one very long hallway connecting endlessly with itself.' Corporate architecture of this kind, adds Hawthorne, seems to promote a mindset decried by Berkeley prof Louise A. Mozingo. 'If all you see in your workday are your co-workers and all you see out your window is the green perimeter of your carefully tended property,' Mozingo writes, and you drive to and from work in the cocoon of your private car, 'the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
The Walled Garden Of Eden (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Walled Garden Of Eden (Score:3)
Maybe they should change the name to Playtronics. [imdb.com]
Essentially a walled world (Score:5, Insightful)
Isnt that Apple's business model anyway?
Re:Essentially a walled world (Score:3)
Not really. When it comes to iDevices the software distribution is pretty much a walled garden, yes. But on the computer side this isn't the case. And in general Apple is more about selling products and systems that are tightly integrated and designed to "Just Work(tm)". I'm not saying this always works out the way they want it to, but that seems to be what they strive for. They don't sell you a bunch of generic parts put together into a computer that you are supposed to easily be able to replace and toy with (hardware-wise), they sell a product that's supposed to be good enough that you're not supposed to feel the need to pop the case open.
It's not for everyone (or every use-case), but when it works it can be extremely good (myself I use a 27" iMac as my main workstation but I wouldn't want every machine in my home to be a mac).
Re:Essentially a walled world (Score:3)
They still sell computers?
Re:Essentially a walled world (Score:2)
It's over 30% of the money they make
Re:Essentially a walled world (Score:2, Interesting)
When it comes to iDevices the software distribution is pretty much a walled garden, yes. But on the computer side this isn't the case.
This distinction works right up until the point where, as some rumors have it, Apple discontinues the MacBook Air and Mac mini in favor of new iDevices that are glorified iPad and Apple TV and respectively.
Re:Essentially a walled world (Score:2, Insightful)
This distinction works right up until the point where, as some rumors have it, Apple discontinues the MacBook Air and Mac mini in favor of new iDevices that are glorified iPad and Apple TV and respectively.
Your argument works right up to the point were, as rumors typically go, they turn out to be false.
Save your angst and garment rendering for reality. It's bad enough as it is.
Re:Essentially a walled world (Score:3)
Right, because Apple is going to get rid of a *growing* and *extremely profitable* portion of their business -- the Mac / computer business -- to.. uh.. what?
Lock people into a walled garden? Why?
Hint: That garden does not make them that much money. Yes, sure, they profit off of it. But take all of the money they make off of iTunes, off of iBooks, off of Apps, and any other software or services they make or offer -- take all of it and put it in a pile... and it doesn't even KIND OF approach the pile that Macs make.
Granted: iDevices make an even bigger pile, but that doesn't mean the Mac pile is some small, or that its not making record profits on its own all the time.
But Apple sells products. The "walled garden" and the software/content ecosystem is to support those products, not an end to itself. These "rumors" that you mention are nothing but random people talking out of their ass.
If/when the Mac business stops growing -- again, it is GROWING -- maybe they'll think about dumping it for some kind of even bigger iDevice... thing. Except I have no idea what that would be like. But people still want Apple computers: and they want them more and more. iDevices aren't computers, and while Apple speaks of the "post-pc" universe, and says that for many users in many uses, an iPad actually may be /better/ -- that doesn't mean there isn't a huge and profitable market for PCs.
You couldn't take someone who wanted a Mac, MacBook Air, MacMini or any of them and convince many of them to buy an iDevice instead -- they're different products, for different needs.
Macs aren't like iPods which are a declining (but still significant) market for them due to the iPhone being an seamless replacement (except for those with huge music libraries) -- iPod's have been on the steady but slight decline for awhile now. Macs aren't. They're _growing_ still: and they aren't growing out of the red, they're growing years and years past the very solid green and increasing the rate in which that pile of green comes in. Businesses deciding to shut down divisions that make steadily increasing amounts of *profit* every quarter, including record profits during recessions, is kinda beyond stupid to even suggest.
Re:Essentially a walled world (Score:3)
Exxactly, I thought the building seemed like a perfect fit for the company.
1 Infinite Loop (Score:3)
one very long hallway connecting endlessly with itself
In other words, it'll be even more of an infinite loop than Apple's current Infinite Loop campus [wikipedia.org]. Is it even possible for things to be "more infinite"?
Re:1 Infinite Loop (Score:3)
Yes.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Aleph_number [wikimedia.org]
Re:1 Infinite Loop (Score:2)
No. Infinite sets can have different sizes, but they're all equally infinite.
Re:1 Infinite Loop (Score:3)
Re:1 Infinite Loop (Score:2)
Exactly. "Infinite" is a binary classification -- a set is either finite or infinite. There is no "more" or "less" infinite. (The same is true of "unique".)
Hence, all things that are infinite are equally infinite, since there are no degrees.
Re:1 Infinite Loop (Score:3)
i can say the cardinality of the rationals is greater than the cardinality of the integers.
You can say it, but it isn't true. One can map the nonnegative rationals (1-1) into the integers by p/q -> 2^p*3^q, where p=0 or positive, and q is positive; one then maps -p/q -> 2^p*3^q*5.
Re:1 Infinite Loop (Score:2)
Re:1 Infinite Loop (Score:2)
Uncountable infinite sets tend to be larger than countable sets by a factor of about 3-4, although it's gone down a little bit recently since the recession.
Still, better than my 401K. How to I transfer funds?
Re:1 Infinite Loop (Score:2)
(At least the spatial dimensions - and I'm willing to bet that they'll be finite in the temporal dimension as well.)
Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
People who have nothing better to do than criticize some company's proposed building needs to get a life.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
People who have nothing better to do than criticize some company's proposed building needs to get a life.
"LA Times architecture critic"
Yes... architecture critic should stop criticizing architecture...
Re:Who cares? (Score:2, Redundant)
Unless he's a psychologist and technology expert, and also has something to back up this crazy notion, it might as well be a Feng-shui guy arrogantly chiming in on the layout of a motherboard.
(And I say this as an Apple skeptic who realizes that Jobs was, at times, a Feng-shui guy who arrogantly chimed in on the layouts of motherboards with disastrous results)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
That actually is what architecture as a field largely thinks about these days. For the past 90 years or so, at least since the publication of Le Courbusier's Toward an Architecture [amazon.com] (1923) if not earlier, architecture is about constructing spaces that enable and shape living, work and leisure, and what effects architectural choices have on individuals and societies. It is, yes, also about the placement of load-bearing walls and whether to include decorative gargoyles on the pediment, but those aren't the main things architects and architecture ctitics study. So this article's criticism seems pretty directly within scope: how architecture shapes work and the interaction of workers with the society around them.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
Huh. That's interesting. And here I thought that the Architect's job was most to spend expensive hours arguing with the Engineer.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
That's why architects design buildings, and not engineers. They are actually educated to do this sort of thing, believe it or not.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
That's why architects design buildings, and not engineers. They are actually educated to do this sort of thing, believe it or not.
The last time an architect tried to design an engineer the results were definitely not "aesthetically pleasing".
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
that was funny
steve jobs actually did chime about motherboard (Score:2)
layouts... its pretty well known he made some guys redesign a motherboard because it wasnt pretty enough.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
In fact, having read the description of the new office and looked at the photos, I think I'd personally quite enjoy working in a location like that.
And the criticisms themselves? They, essentially, boil down to "it doesn't force people to socialize with the rest of the community". I mean, seriously:
"corporations were gaining in wealth and global reach and increasingly fleeing the city for the privacy and elbow room of the suburbs"
"turn its back on cities and stake a claim on the suburban pastoral idyll — isolated, proprietary, verdant, and disengaged from civic space"
"precludes the concentration of population that makes public transportation feasible for governments and users"
"If all you see in your workday are your co-workers and all you see out your window is the green perimeter of your carefully tended property," she writes, and you drive to and from work in the cocoon of your private car, "the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
No shit. We all should live and work like fish in the barrel according to her, I guess.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3)
You don't understand the Silicon Valley culture. Seeing and chatting with employees of other companies is a common occurrence, whether its on a lunch break or going for a jog or taking the (admittedly awful) public transit. And then when you need to work with people from Company X, if you don't already know them, you might at least know someone else from that company. Not to mention the obvious advantages when it comes time to change jobs -- which is perhaps an advantage that Apple hopes to deny its employees.
If Apple is really isolating themselves in the burbs, it will be to the disadvantage of their workers.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
People who have nothing better to do than criticize some company's proposed building needs to get a life.
"LA Times architecture critic"
Yes... architecture critic should stop criticizing architecture...
I like it better when he dances.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
As opposed to someone who criticizes someone for criticizing someone ^^
Re:Who cares? (Score:3)
Re:Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
I was more bugged about him blasting Jobs for not including a credit roll as part of the proposal. I've been in on these meetings and I've never once heard names being dropped about who worked on the project. The council members wouldn't recognize the names of famous architects or design firms so what would be the point? He also bashes it for not really being green without making any specific points except for claiming you'll need a car. I guess he was pissed off that Jobs didn't include a monorail in the design. It was mostly opinion with few if any facts. More "I hate Apple, just because". Jobs made Pixar what it is and saved Apple from a sure death. He deserves some kudos. And no he didn't do it all on his own but what exec has ever done it all himself? He never once claimed he did any of it he simply provided the leadership needed to make it all work. The guy changed computers and even personal electronics for millions of people. It'll be a sad day when he finally passes.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are other ways to avoid needing a car on a campus other than including a monorail. Good architects these days notice immediately the transportation requirements created by the architecture, because of the energy, pollution, time, social and beauty degradation that cars bring. Creating a need for cars is certainly not green.
Jobs deserves and gets plenty of kudos for his tech and biz achievements. But when his perhaps final achievement has problems, especially one at odds with the humanist image his whole career has cultivated, that doesn't deserve kudos. It deserves criticism that points out where the architecture doesn't live up to the standards Jobs created.
But then, your ramble winds into an early eulogy. You're not talking about architecture. You're just an Anonymous fanboy Coward who detected less than total worship of Steve, and jumped in to save the day.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3)
What? The guy is a journalist who writes about architecture.
I understand that you may not give a rat's ass about architecture, or human factors engineering, or Apple, or their recently proposed spaceship building. But seriously? Okay, fine, anyone who writes critically about architecture is a loser with no life. Also, Roger Ebert is a waste of space, and Edward Said is a piker.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
I'm not going to go that far, but just read the dude's quote in TFSummary:
"the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
I know, I *KNOW* that your ears can taste feces. And your eyes, since you're reading that.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
And here you are, criticizing someone else's work although you clearly don't have a clue on what you are talking about. This is the definition of hypocrisy.
Obsessive Analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
'the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
Or maybe it is just an office building and the product is defined by the corporate culture and people who presumably explore the community beyond work and home.
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering that being surrounded by green space is a health benefit, I'd rather be there than their artsy-fartsy-but-doesn't-really-mean-anything "notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm"
Downtown cores suck. It's called a concrete jungle for a reason.
Downtown cores are perfectly fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't with downtown cores. The problem is with how Americans tend to build them. The "concrete jungle" you speak of is a uniquely-American mistake.
Of course such downtown areas will be shitty and imbalanced if you only have downtowns where nobody lives, and people only come from the suburbs to work there from 0900 to 1700 on weekdays.
But if you do it sensibly, like is done in Europe, Asia and even American-like countries like Canada and Australia, you end up with excellent areas that are very livable. People end up living downtown, rather than just working there. Because of this, there are often extensive parks and green space. There is nightlife. There is a community spirit that you just don't find in the suburbs.
Now, this sort of a downtown area does depend on some things that many Americans mistakenly consider "socialist" or even "communist", like good public transit. That's why America only has a few good downtown areas, and they are always in older cities like Chicago and New York City. Americans today have such a warped view that they probably couldn't implement a good downtown, even if they tried their hardest.
Re:Downtown cores are perfectly fine. (Score:2)
Re:Downtown cores are perfectly fine. (Score:2)
But if you do it sensibly, like is done in Europe, Asia and even American-like countries like Canada and Australia, you end up with excellent areas that are very livable.
You might want to be more specific than that. I lived in Canada - Vancouver, specifically - for 2 years, and its downtown is as much a "concrete jungle" as Seattle, where I live now.
Re:Downtown cores are perfectly fine. (Score:4, Informative)
The number of people living within walking distance of the downtown "core" in Vancouver is significantly higher than in Seattle (at least on a percentage basis). The whole "west end" of Vancouver houses about 45,000 out of 640,000 of Vancouver residents as only one example - Coal Harbour, the "East Side", Yaletown and False Creek house a bunch of people within walking distance of the financial and shopping and entertainment districts in the downtown. The downtown does have some non-residential regions, but there are a lot of "living areas" in the downtown - see the links to downtown neighbourhoods at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Vancouver [wikipedia.org]
With that said, Canada has repeated much of the same errors in city planning as has happened in much of the US, resulting is similar suburban sprawl and inner-city urban decay.
In comparing Vancouver and Seattle, I have heard a few times that Seattle planners look to Vancouver as an example of the benefits of not having a major highway system in the city - it has promoted the growth of alternative commercial centres (in Burnaby, Surrey, Abbotsford), and limited the distances people commute (though not the amount of time). Highways are good for getting stuff from one city to another, but when they enable people to travel huge distances daily they tend to fragment the development of a sense of local community and result in huge environmental costs.
Re:Downtown cores are perfectly fine. (Score:3, Insightful)
What a load of crap, modded up by Americans who long for a better world, and Euros who imagine the US as a hellhole. I've been to more European cities than I have fingers, and the only one that had substantially more greenspace than the US was Rome, and that's just because it had the good fortune to be built atop the ruins of an ancient civilization.
And even if we make believe that Europe is some idyllic paradise, the concrete jungle is "uniquely American"? Have you ever seen the streets of Taiwan or Korea or India? You think they have tons of green space lying about?
Go on Google Maps and look at NYC compared to London. The only difference is that the Hudson is blue, whereas the Thames is a distinctly British shade of "muck".
Re:Downtown cores are perfectly fine. (Score:4, Insightful)
You propose good socialist vorker bugs on a stinking bus. Europe uses force to achieve this. It's creeping into some US urban stink holes but fortunately not all.
You got that right.
Stockholm resident here. Man, it's terrible. Haven't owned a car since I moved here. The government here forces me not to have one by making it possible for me to get pretty much anywhere in the greater metro area in, say, 45 minutes or less, just about anytime. I can get to the downtown office on Södermalm in about half the time it would take me to drive there. Costs me about a hundred bucks a month (790 SEK currently) for a 30-day unlimited pass for the subway, surface commuter rail, buses, and ferries--how dare they charge me less than I'd spent on petrol just to get back and forth between home and work. What's worse, all those vehicles are generally clean and well-maintained.
Damn that government! Damn them all to Hell!
Re:Downtown cores are perfectly fine. (Score:3)
A cost study done in 2009 states that Indianapolis would have saved half a billion if it bought every rider a car and 5 years of gasoline.
And did the ding-dongs who performed this alleged study determine how much worse traffic would be if all the cum filth mystery hair gel excreters were given their own cars to piddle around in? I'm guessing probably not. However, I've experienced a real-world example of what happens when public transit networks shut down in supposedly auto-centric cities. I was in Los Angeles about a decade ago when their transit system went on strike. My regular 20 minute, 11 mile drive home from Monterey Park to Downtown LA was transformed into a three hour bumper-to-bumper gridlock hell.
That's because roads can only carry so many cars, and when you tip them past a certain threshold total gridlock results. Building new roads (or expanding existing ones) is far, far more expensive than simply packing more people onto existing roads via buses (or utilizing rail to haul even greater passenger densities).
Of course, if you provide lots of affordable housing near where people actually work, the need for both automobiles and mass transit declines. You're starting to see the urban cores of numerous American cities revive as housing becomes available within them again (due to loft and apartment conversions of old commercial space). Downtown Los Angeles is a great example of this - I think almost as many people pack into the enormous downtown restaurant Bottega Louie on a Friday night as lived downtown when I left there in 2004. While some drive in, many live in those converted spaces, as well as in numerous new apartments and condos built over the past decade. In dense population centers like that, private automobiles make little sense.
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:2)
The critic doesn't say that the campus should have less green space or more downtown core.
And N California downtown cores don't suck. Just because yours does doesn't mean others' do.
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:3)
You don't know what you are talking about, and you reasoning is simplistic. A metropolitan area doesn't necessarily mean a "concrete jungle". See the Athens Charter [wikipedia.org] to start to understand how a metropolitan area can and does improve the lives of those who experience it, as no mindless, unorganized urban sprawl can, no matter how many trees are planted. Only the poorly designed urban areas, or those who lack any rational organization, which is pretty much the case of every major US city, tend to take the shape of a sort of shanty town with skyscrapers. Cities such as Paris, Brasilia and Curitiba were built following a rational urban plan, and they aren't the "concrete jungle" which you mentioned. In fact, cities only take the shape of unorganized, unlivable "concrete jungles" if shiny new buildings are mindlessly accepted by town councils due to their shininess and in spite of any negative influence they have on the environment, economy and community.
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:2)
Downtown cores suck. It's called a concrete jungle for a reason.
Downtown cores suck because they're designed that way, by people who hate them because they've never experienced anything better. Older, highly dense city cores in Europe, on the other hand, don't suck -- because thought was put into their design. Read James Howard Kunstler [amazon.com] to find out more.
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh what? You're right except for the urban sprawl part; spawning new campuses in (relatively) remote locations drives housing development near them... urban sprawl. What we need is more use of already-extant locations. For example there's lots of malls going empty all over the country; Apple should find a clever way to repurpose some of those. The malls already have all the services needed by an office building, they have more parking than you will need but you can use some of that flat space to put up more buildings. Or, you can rip some out and put in trees, which would be welcomed by the community. When and if the economy recovers to the point that there is a need for new building, they can put up their fancy new campus then and let the mall turn back into a mall.
The campus will have less trees than it could without a building there, and it is also unnecessary as we have plenty of empty buildings. But reusing existing structures doesn't feed anyone's ego...
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:2)
Windows. Malls don't tend to have 'em in very great abundance. Which is one of the reasons that they're a sucky place to work.
The new apple building concept drawing looks like there will be a lot of views of the outside from the offices, and outside isn't just some concrete canyon, it's going to be somewhat natured. From the exterior shots, you can't tell what the workers' point of view will be (maybe they have no sight line to a window unless they're management or something....), but it looks like a great place to work, assuming those great big windows are viewed by everyone.
It seems like that is the architect's main objection: the facility will not be nearly as shitty as facilities other workers have to deal with, and somehow that unfairness equates to bad design?
How will employees commute? (Score:3)
Windows. Malls don't tend to have 'em in very great abundance.
Nor do Macs, incidentally. For not much more than the price of a copy of Windows designed to run on a Mac (Windows 7 Home Premium retail), one could buy a nettop with its own copy of Windows (Windows 7 Home Premium OEM) and stick it on the KVM next to a Mac mini.
It seems like that is the architect's main objection: the facility will not be nearly as shitty as facilities other workers have to deal with, and somehow that unfairness equates to bad design?
How will employees commute between home and this new campus? Is it close enough to walk or bike? Is there adequate public transit? Or will most employees have to drive? The article quotes UC Berkeley architecture professor Louise A. Mozingo that a campus like this "precludes the concentration of population that makes public transportation feasible for governments and users."
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:2)
And yet, there is not a need for ANY development, only remodeling.
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
Before wasting your time criticizing someone else's work, you should at least try to understand what has been said. After all, odds are that those you are trying to criticize, which happen to have taught architecture at Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley [latimes.com] may actually know a bit more about architecture than you do.
Regarding your claim, the Christopher Hawthorne's criticism isn't a simplistic and naive tirade on "lots of trees" and other nonsense, which you may only interpret as such if you hadn't read the article (and therefore made your comment to be baseless and knee-jerk gibberish). What Christopher Hawthorne stated is that, contrary to what Jobs' and his minions said, the design for Apple's new campus isn't cutting-edge and "is practically bursting with contradictions". Among the contradictions, Christopher Hawthorne pointed out the following:
He goes further by stating the following obvious but insightful point:
For those with a basic understanding the deep impact that urban planning has on our lives, including social and economical, this is rather obvious. If the city accepts this sort of architecture then it will be forced to invest time and money aggravating their urban mobility problem and making their lives harder by making it impossible to provide basic logistic networks that are cheap to maintain and to use. Moreover, if a city is designed so that their inhabitants' lives are limited to a small bubble of reality which contains nothing more than their suburban homes, their cars and their workspaces then this sort of urban plan will end generating generations of sociopaths who are detached from their community and it's affairs. This will force segregation based on where you are employed. This problem and it's negative impact on society is widely known for decades, with the inception of social housing [slashdot.org] and the problems that it ended up generating in pretty much every country which invested in it, including France, Germany, and even the US.
So, no. This isn't, as you put it, a petty criticism targetted at Apple, an organization which, by the victimizing comments some people make, is always perfect and is always right. This is a very reasonable and realistic comment on the negative impact that this shiny piece of architecture has and will have on a community, economically and socially. And if you tried to step away from Apple's reality distortion field you would realize that.
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:4, Interesting)
To a layman an office building may be "just an office building", but that doesn't mean that it is true and that the design of a building doesn't have social and psychological impact on those who experience the building and interact with it. It does, and it has a deeper impact on our everyday lives than we, particularly the laymen, are able to recognize, at least at first sight. There is a reason why architecture is more demanding and requires a lot more technical know-how than what is expected from mere designers and even civil engineers. Just for a glimpse, take Kevin Lynch's [wikipedia.org] take on a city's mental map [wikipedia.org], and try to understand the importance of being able to define a space where you can explicitly shape those mental maps to provide a better living experience to those who use it.
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:3)
If you believe that the need to design spaces which are able to provide, among other benefits, a healthy (mentally speaking) and comfortable living experience is akin to "prostitutes in the street" then you are both a clueless idiot and needlessly rude. Meanwhile, if you don't understand this and you would like to understand then there is a simple exercise you can do on your own, which is to pull out a sheet of paper, think about the place you live in and just draw a simple diagram of what parts of that place are meaningful to you. If you end up covering some km of urban area with only a couple of scribbles then you live in a place that isn't that good to live in.
I am a civil engineer, mind you, and although I (and other civil engineers) know more about technical such as how to design proper public sanitation networks, structural systems and even the building processes, knowing how to properly define spaces and to adequately plan the urban space are entirely different beasts. That's the job for an architect, and they tend to do it very well.
Re:Obsessive Analysis (Score:3)
Exactly. I initially started doing an Architecture degree before changing to Civil Engineering after realising it was a better fit for my analytical personality.
I had a profound respect for good architects and it was great to work with them on the rare projects where the client actually let them do their stuff properly. On these sorts of projects the architects and engineers work together collaboratively during the design rather than just handing a design off to the engineers for checking.
I have noticed though that good architects and engineers have much more respect for each others respective professions than mediocre ones tend to. And I think this is partially due to the kinds of projects they can attract. It's hard to really judge someone elses ability when you don't get to work with them.
But because so many projects don't allow that kind of teamwork, most architects and engineers don't end up working collaboratively together to gain each others respect. Most projects just have the clients and/or their project managers handing work to architects and engineers in isolation with minimal time for design and nobody really gets an insight into the concerns and design objectives of the other groups.
Since I've moved to IT/software, I've seen the same dynamics happening here too. eg developers, designers and sysadmins not really respecting each others work when they get handed it in stages by project managers rather than working together during the design stages.
A bit of a stretch (Score:4, Insightful)
Architecture is an art. Some like, some don't. It is an interesting viewpoint but trying to link the shape of a building to Apple employees social responsibilities is a bit of a stretch. Especially since most university campuses are cocoons in of themselves yet successfully promote global social responsibilities.
Re:A bit of a stretch (Score:2)
Especially since most university campuses are cocoons in of themselves yet successfully promote global social responsibilities.
I agreed with you until this point. At which time I realized the critic of Apple's new campus might have a point. The reason that is the case is that university campuses tend to promote "global social responsibility" that absolves those in them from actually doing anything themselves about the problems around them. The products of university "global social responsibility" demand that the government do something, thus they do not need to dedicate their own resources to attempting to address the problems themselves.
Re:A bit of a stretch (Score:2)
Finally some real Teabagger anarchism.
Universities don't address problems with themselves or the world around them? Did you graduate from Apex Tech or something?
People in (American) universities often learn that our government is the people organized to do things to protect our rights. People these universities produce are more likely to actually vote and otherwise participate in public life. And are more likely to learn history and reason which tell us that without government, we get anarchy that corporations (and their version without state limits) quickly fill.
You seem to be living in a cocoon yourself.
"Positive rights" or just entitlements? (Score:3)
our government is the people organized to do things to protect our rights.
And a lot of university graduates confuse rights with entitlements, which they call positive rights [wikipedia.org]. For example, the article mentions that cocoon campuses like this make public transit more difficult. Is public transit a "right" or a mere entitlement?
Re:A bit of a stretch (Score:2)
It's not simply "the shape of a building". The architecture determines the limits of the function, which limits the activities of the people. Good architecture is well understood to strongly influence the overall tendencies of the activities of the people who use it. Architecture puts its users into a frame of mind, which can strongly influence social attitudes and behaviors well beyond its walls.
Re:A bit of a stretch (Score:3)
There's actually considerable criticism of that aspect of university architecture as well, the "playground for educated kids w/o jobs" aspect of the American 4-year residential college. Some universities are more integrated with an urban area, as is more typical in Europe, where e.g. the University of Paris is deeply integrated into Parisian life, both physically and culturally, rather than being located in a separated campus.
Shocking... look out the window and see green? (Score:3)
Seems a little backward that there would be complaints that workers might look out their windows and see grass, trees, and other natural things.
Everything I've read on productivity and mental health would suggest it would be beneficial to have a less "urban" view out your window.
Re:Shocking... look out the window and see green? (Score:3)
The review doesn't say the grass and trees are bad. It says that the fact that workers will see only Apple's grass and trees is bad. It's the disconnection, not the greenery that's bad. And the review explains why, in brief but meaningful detail.
Re:Shocking... look out the window and see green? (Score:2)
The review doesn't say the grass and trees are bad. It says that the fact that workers will see only Apple's grass and trees is bad. It's the disconnection, not the greenery that's bad. And the review explains why, in brief but meaningful detail.
Well my understanding is that unless Apple wants to move their headquarters to the middle of a state park or something, staying in Cupertino, CA gives them few choices on who's trees and grass they are allowed to see. The proposed site [techcrunch.com] currently contains office buildings with some trees near a freeway in the middle of an urban setting. Would the reviewer prefer Apple to leave mostly concrete there or simply move into the current site with no change? Basically what other companies like Microsoft, Google, etc do.
Re:Shocking... look out the window and see green? (Score:3)
You failed to understand what has been said. There is absolutely no problem with seeing green when looking out of an office's window. The problem which has been pointed out is that this sort of "let's build an isolated compound in the middle of nowhere" attitude to urban planning and architecture forces the people to dissociate themselves with their community and also the world. This forces people to live in a bubble which comprises of their home, their car and their office. This is an incentive to sociopathy and the lack of a meaningful personal life. Haven't you ever heard of the heavy toll that the dreaded commute takes on anyone? And there's also the economical problem that this causes on everyone, by relying on personal transportation and long, saturated public highways to be able to drive between home and work.
This problem has been recognized in decades, if not over a century. A solution has already been widely recognized and publicized, in the form of the Athens Charter [wikipedia.org]. Yes, it is possible to have a metropolitan area that lets people "look out their windows and see grass, trees, and other natural things." So, why insist on this sort of plan which has a known profound negative impact on society?
Re: Middle of nowhere? (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you actually looked at the map you've linked? It's a suburban wasteland, with streets after streets filled with nothing, where there is nothing to do, to see, to experience and even worth noting. It's a vast waste of space where those who live in it are forced to live in a bubble, void of any community experience and a sense of belonging. It's a place where people risk to be prisoners in their own homes and, to have the change to escape their prison, they must have a car and able to drive it for long periods of time, through a labyrinth of empty suburban roads where everything is dull and looks the same and then through a soulless interstate. That, Marie of Romania, is a place that is designed to suck the life out of you and leave you alone with your miserable life, and incidentally that's exactly one of the points that Christopher Hawthorne made regarding Apple's project.
So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
'the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
Yeah and...so what? Is that a fancy way of saying that office workers should work in the 'hood so, what, I feel some personal responsibility for fixing it? Does that mean I need to work in the hood so I can stare at it all day?
'If all you see in your workday are your co-workers and all you see out your window is the green perimeter of your carefully tended property,
Of course I see my coworkers when I'm at work. That's why they call it work. That's what I'm there to do. And if my workplace can be nice and in nature, hey, cool.
Look, I'm not an Apple fan. I give them shit for all kinds of things. Building a nice work environment for their employees is not on the list of things I will give them shit for. And I don't see it as the job of any company, or any employee, to intentionally increase their connection, proximity, or exposure to increasing urban density. Some people like dense urban areas, some don't, but it's not anybody's responsibility to specifically increase density.
This is predictable coming from an urban paper like the LA Times. They see concrete and steel as desirable. Green things are to be assaulted at all turns. But there are others of us who like trees, shade, grass, and other nice things. The goal isn't to be disconnected from anything - it's to be able to hear something other than traffic noise, and see something other than dirty man-made surfaces while at work.
Hey, I think it sounds nice. I think the LA Times needs to go camping and discover that there's more to life than concrete.
Re:So what? (Score:2)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
The critique didn't say anything about "the hood", by which you mean some ghetto. Cupertino doesn't have "the hood". The "collective metropolitan realm" is lots of other rich, high-end IT corporations and the other businesses that support them. But that realm has some diversity: other people who aren't working on Apple's stuff. Not getting Apple's specific corporate values or outlook. It might or might not have dirty manmade surfaces, concrete and steel. It doesn't really have density, except in the corporate arcologies like Apple's. It does have other people, with other points of view. Which is healthy. Monoculture isn't healthy, no matter how green it is.
Why do you fear the hood, that you surely have managed to avoid without an Apple architect, so much that you see it lurking in the shadows of an architecture review that doesn't have it? Is it your guilt over not fixing it? Because the only place your complaint could have come from is inside your own psychology. Not the review you're using as a way to get it out there in front of us.
Re:So what? (Score:2)
Why do you fear the hood, that you surely have managed to avoid without an Apple architect, so much that you see it lurking in the shadows of an architecture review that doesn't have it?
Of course it doesn't. Because that's not how academics (like the one cited) speak. I'm reading between the lines on that comment about "shared responsibility" for the "urban realm". While the article deals with Cupertino, that line was lifted from a book that wasn't about Apple. So the author of that book had something else in mind entirely. It seems pretty clear what the author is saying - she's blaming corporations for "turning their backs" on cities, which encourages their employees to drive to work, and then by providing them with nice places, it keeps them from engaging with the urban core. That's what she's talking about with regard to the "shared responsibility", "collective", and "metropolitan realm".
The LA Times writer then makes a specific link from that analysis to Apple, to criticize them for a campus that isn't sufficiently urban. The connection is clear - he thinks that companies shouldn't build employees nice places to work so that they can have an opportunity to experience the problems around them, so that they might be compelled to fix them. If that's not the point, then the article is simply pointless rambling and a random citation from some professor at Berkeley.
My questions are simple: What does 'urban' mean in this context? Why should it be increased? What problem is it solving, and for whom? And whose job is it to fix it?
Is it your guilt over not fixing it?
Nope. I didn't make the problem.
Because the only place your complaint could have come from is inside your own psychology. Not the review you're using as a way to get it out there in front of us.
Yay, another armchair internet psychologist practicing without a license! You're pretty far offbase there - "Doc".
Monoculture isn't healthy, no matter how green it is.
I'd agree, and if that were the crux of the article, I'd wholeheartedly agree with it. But it wasn't. All they had was one throwaway line about interacting with your coworkers - which is, I'll repeat again, *what they pay you to do*. Instead, the article focused on urban density and greenspace, not corporate culture. All of the harms they claim were to society from not having the claimed advantages of urbanization. None of the harms dealt with the disadvantages of monoculture, which would be incurred by the company.
So we're back where we started. Why is density a good thing? Who does urban density help? Why should that be so important that a company should be attacked for daring to build a campus that isn't dense?
Re:So what? (Score:2)
But that realm has some diversity: other people who aren't working on Apple's stuff. Not getting Apple's specific corporate values or outlook. It might or might not have dirty manmade surfaces, concrete and steel. It doesn't really have density, except in the corporate arcologies like Apple's. It does have other people, with other points of view. Which is healthy. Monoculture isn't healthy, no matter how green it is.
And how is this different from working for MS, HP, Google, IBM or a number of different companies tech or not that have their own campuses? And how is this different from working at Apple today? The critique of the plans assumes that the building is the only contributing factor to this effect; it is not today and will not be in the future.
Reading the article, the critic seems to go out of his way to nitpick on little things. Jobs wasn't asked and didn't mention the name of the architects which according the critic was displayed on the plans anyways. He also criticizes the building as being car dependent. The last time I checked California was a car dependent state and how is it the responsibility of Apple to install mass transit. Apple can design based some notion of fantasy but if mass transit isn't a reality anywhere in the near future, can you blame them for being practical about that aspect?
Certainly everyone can have their opinion but it's not the first time people have been wrong on the pyschological aspects of a building. There was much opposition [wikipedia.org] to the Vietnam War Memorial when the design was first unveiled. Many thought the simple design was "a black gash of shame" and that it wasn't conventional enough. Today it is the most visited war memorial and much of the controversy has disappeared.
As usual, when it comes to something Apple does... (Score:2, Insightful)
...Tall Poppies.
Re:As usual, when it comes to something Apple does (Score:2)
"You're just jealous 'cos I'm smarter," used to sound stupid in the playground. It's the battle cry of the populist appealing to the mediocre to join the "winning team".
But since the '80s it's become some sort of circular business philosophy: if you're rich you must be good; if you're good you deserve to be rich.
Like the last quote (Score:2)
You cold say it's one infinite loop.
Thanks I'm here all night! Try the veal!
That's one way to get attention... (Score:2)
.
But I have to wonder, was the purpose of the critique to be ego-building for the author?
Re:That's one way to get attention... (Score:2)
The purpose of the critique was to discuss, and to generate more discussion, by someone who knows architecture. Clearly the purpose was also to help architecture serve people better, by improving architecture.
Your critique does nothing but try to bring yourself more attention. It does nothing to improve anyone or anything. You're projecting.
Another space (Score:2)
The point seems to be that the urban design (of Cupertino) is about to promote individual space rather than collective responsibility for the society and the environment.
The building itself is a detachment. It's essentially a decentralized and non-hierarchical design. The focal point is not in the managers but in people around you. The empty space is there to be filled with the collective ideas and thoughts. The shortest distance to the other side is via a nature oriented space where people can meet up. The values promoted by the design itself are distinct from typical offices.
It's evident that the building facilitates innovation. And like for many a innovator the external world is slightly distanced.
Re:Another space (Score:3)
I'm uncertain how much information has been made available to the general public, but I would have thought that the way the spaces flow internally will have as much if not more of an impact on the daily experiecne of the workers.
I currently work in a building on an intersection of two major streets in the CBD of Melbourne. On days that I bring my lunch (which I should do more frequently anyway for health and financial reasons) I barely interact with the environment around me. I catch public transport to and from the building and am deposited within 200 meters of the front door. The only interaction I have in the local area is a group of food outlets at the base of a neighbouring building and a gourmet chocolate shop around the corner. I live in the suburbs and do most of my shoping etc... there.
From a spatial point of view, I couldn't be more integrated with my environment, I need to move through it on foot and by tram daily. However I have virtually no connection to it other than scenery as I move to and from the building where I spend my time, mostly at one desk looking at computer monitors. The only wondows are in the management offices and look out at other high rise buildings.
While I understand the connectivity that the critic is suggesting a more urban design may afford, given the sheer size of the complex, it was always going to be introspective for most users rather than deeply interactive with the surrounding environs. People generally don't go to work to chat with their neighbours, and the type of poeple like to be working at Apple are likely to be selected for more driven personalities than the norm.
Buildings can certainly shape interactions by creating affordances, however corporate culture is likely to have a much greater affect on staff behaviours than whether the building is housed in a park or in a tower downtown.
So is the reverse true? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you share a building with tons of other companies, and if the view out your window is a busy thoroughfare, is 'the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm' near at heart and therefore contributing to some architectural faux-topia?
Oh wait, that's New York City, where nobody looks you in the eye and if somebody says 'Good Morning' to you then you get ready to defend yourself. 'Shared responsibility in a collective metropolitan realm' indeed. Or Los Angeles, where there are no thoroughfares because everybody drives everywhere anyway.
I also like the posts to the effect of 'architecture is art and discussing art is good.' I guess, but seriously, an 'architecture critic' for a newspaper? Theatre critics are at least answering the question 'should I go see this show,' but wtf is an architecture critic doing? 'Should I go hang out at this corporate campus?'
Re:So is the reverse true? (Score:3)
I was a New Yorker for many years and would never suggest that they aren't friendly (and I'd take a New Yorker any day over a random LA stranger).
Friendly, yes. 'conscious of shared responsibility in a collective metropolitan realm' ... they'd punch you in face because you'd deserve it.
Cupertino Has No Grit, Dirt or Crime (Score:3)
There is no grit, dirt or crime in Cupertino, or anywhere near it, until you get to East Palo Alto or downtown San Jose. A more open Apple campus interconnected with the rest of its neighborhood would get more clean, shiny, happy people. But at least people from outside Apple, tired for different reasons. With some different perspectives, some of which might not even be IT. Some might not even be corporate. That exposure would humanize the day, not corporatize it in every way.
And since Apple's products are so personal, more diversity in the environment its people produce from would also inform the products we get from it.
But then, this is the company that gave us the white head wires that indicate the wearer is in their own personal universe, totally tailored by and for themselves.
Apple has become "narcissism for the rest of us", in a society increasingly insistent in seeing nothing but itself in a retouched mirror. The subtitle to this story shows the fear of the outside that nerds have raised to a high art.
Who is this goon? (Score:3)
I used to live not far from there. Did it even occur to him that the employees DO NOT WANT to see much that is beyond the campus? That being there, and isolated, might actually afford a sense of relief?
Some better Pictures (Score:4, Informative)
On the city's website is a better overview picture, as well as a map showing how it fits into the city.
http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?page=1107 [cupertino.org]
Re:Some better Pictures (Score:2)
On the city's website is a better overview picture, as well as a map showing how it fits into the city.
Holy Crap! That's a cyclotron! Hasn't anybody else figured this out? If you guys think that the Reality Distortion Field is strong now, just wait until this puppy gets finished.
This just can't end well.
Apple trees (Score:2)
The building should be surrounded by apple trees.
Clever, right?
Having worked in both office parks and cities... (Score:5, Insightful)
...I'll take a city any day.
I worked on a corporate campus that was well integrated into the city of Berkeley, CA, for instance. Being able to easily go have lunch somewhere interesting, or stop by a bookstore, or visit the farmers' market--in other words, do the normal stuff that human beings like to do, as opposed to what food-court designers like to do--was a huge benefit of my job being located where it was.
Working in an office park in South San Francisco, on the other hand, was like being perpetually stuck at the airport. My company provided a video game room to compensate. But it was like being an intelligent animal given a tire to play with at a poorly designed zoo. It is amazing to me that a place where tens of thousands of people work could be designed with so little thought to their needs other than cubicle space.
This is why Silicon Valley companies such as Google provide all these seemingly cool benefits such as gourmet cafeterias. The office parks and campuses leave a lot to be desired in terms of quality of life when you're hiring people who may have just moved from a cool college town. As nice as the cafeteria at Google is, I doubt it's as cool as the gourmet gulch I left behind in Berkeley.
pop psychology 101 (Score:3)
"the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
Hmmmm.... that same notion didn't seem to arise on Wall street or in the banking sector even though they are generally situated in the heart of cities... maybe this pop-psychological link to the community doesn't override all the other factors, like being either a caring person or a sociopath? Jus' sayin'.
fascinating question.. re electronic trading (Score:3)
in the 2000s hedge funds increasingly became run out of people's basements... take connecticut for example. hedge fund capital of the world... dudes sitting in their mcmansions trading bonds in their man-caves.
now with electronic trading of stocks, and commodities futures... the 'open outcry' pits where traders go to work and yell at each other, have almost disappeared... all that has happened mostly in the last 10 years.
I thought the lawn was a public park (Score:2)
Problem easily fixed (Score:3)
and all you see out your window is the green perimeter
Block up the windows.
Office workers should consider themselves bloody lucky to either have a window to stare out of, or enough time away from doing their work to make one worthwhile. Isn't the desktop image on their monitors enough?
Ugh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus. I can't describe in words how contemptuous I am of anybody who would utter those words with a straight face.
The crazy thing is, I would expect anybody who thinks that way to be an Apple zealot in the first place.
Neither isolated nor that impressive. (Score:3)
Cupertino is mostly suburban housing and strip malls. Apple's plan would be an improvement.
As isolated corporate campuses go, it's not very isolated. Just in Silicon Valley, there are far more isolated HQs. There's Oracle HQ [panoramio.com], which is surrounded by water on three sides and has a huge lawn on the fourth. Like Larry Ellison, it's an in-your-face statement of arrogance.
Google HQ is somewhat isolated; they now have almost all of the Shoreline Industrial Park. Their architecture is standard industrial park, built for SGI before SGI tanked.
For over-the-top corporate HQ design, there's Excite@Home. [google.com] Yes, they're long gone. But before that dot-com went bust, they built an awesome headquarters complex on a finger of land a full mile out in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It has spectacular architecture, isolation, impressive open spaces, baseball fields, a health club with Olympic size pool, and a marina. Excite@Home went bust before moving in. The buildings were vacant for years, as a real estate company tried to rent them out. It was strange to walk through the huge complex of beautifully maintained empty office buildings. EA, Dreamworks, and some pharma companies now rent space there. It's still underutilized.
IBM's Almaden Research Center [google.com] is the purest expression of the isolated research center. It's on a mountaintop south of San Jose, surrounded by open land and parks. You enter through a modest gate, then drive half a mile through the hills, seeing nothing but open land and trees. Then you see IBM's glass and steel buildings. The view of the mountains from the cafeteria is spectacular. Much good work came out of there during IBM's glory years, including disk drive technology and several Nobel prizes. Today it's a shadow of what it once was.
Compared to all of those, Apple's planned HQ is nothing.
BULLSHIT -- Apple Stores are public (Score:3)
Fucking Apple Stores are not cut off from the world! Fully 1/3rd of all Apple employees work at an Apple Store with the actual consumers of the products. Every Apple Store is like a public entrance to the mothership. The Apple Store is like "onstage," and the mothership is like "backstage."
Yes, creative people need to seclude themselves away while they work their shit out. They need a refuge that is outside of time and space, and they need it to be distraction-free, which it very often is not in an office, with fucking business criminals running around having meetings and and figuring out new ways to fuck the customer over.
And if you work in front of a Mac, iPad, and iPhone all day, with your browser, email, Twitter, IM, 3 fucking FaceTime cameras, and so on, you are anything but cut off from the world.
And when someone is working at Apple, that *is* a kind of community service. I don't care that the company somehow figured out how to take a 40% profit margin on an iPad, I care that they are selling the best $499 computer ever, and in many cases to people who have never used computers before. In other cases, to people who have had many computers, but never one that didn't crash, didn't get viruses, didn't demand they learn I-T, and can show accurate color and render HTML5 correctly. In other cases, they brought computing to a location or task it wasn't in before. For example, they made a phone that runs a Mac-class native C multitrack recorder called FourTrack that I have used to write hundreds of songs over the past 3 years, wherever I was, whatever I was doing when inspiration struck. Thousands of other songwriters also, FourTrack is very popular. You have almost certainly heard songs that were written using it without knowing it, which might not have even been written otherwise. There is one song that the writer said he wrote while halfway up a rock face, and he stopped and recorded the song in his head in FourTrack on iPhone. He could have forgotten it otherwise.
With all the corporate malfeasance going on, a bought US government deliberately bankrupting the country to reduce corporate taxes by even more, the only reason you would be knocking Apple is you are starfucking. Everybody has a fucking opinion on Apple these days, most of them totally fucking misinformed. So tiresome.
Re:Can take anyone seriously that writes (Score:3)
Yes it does, as do you and everybody else who lives in a society. Go move to a cabin in the woods if you don't like it.
Regarding taxes, I recall them trying to figure a way to pay less. Which is unsurprising, it's the same thing all corporations do.
Re:Apple makes me uncomfortable (Score:3)