Apple to commemorate late, great co-founder Steve Jobs in April
To commemorate the late Steve Jobs, who passed away in 2011 aged just 56, the fruit of his labour—the multi-billion-pound Apple empire—has chosen to continue his legacy by completing a brand new 1,000-capacity auditorium in what will be named Apple Park.
In a fitting tribute, Apple have chosen to locate the eponymous Steve Jobs Theatre in Cupertino, California, the location of Jobs’s last public event before his untimely death. During his lifetime Jobs was a vocal advocate of this new campus, wanting it to be the “best office building in the world” and hoping it to be an architectural inspiration for current and future generations.
As with everything that Apple produces, the theatre will be a stunning technological feat, consisting of 2.9 million square feet and will top the scales at an estimated $5billion—a relative drop in the ocean for a company whose annual turnover often eclipses $51.1billion. Such a budget has allowed constructors to create outside walls made up of what Apple says are the world’s largest panels of curved glass.
Job’s successor, Tim Cook, has praised the scheme and the man for whom the project is named: “Steve’s vision for Apple stretched far beyond his time with us. He intended Apple Park to be the home of innovation for generations to come”. And Apple being Apple, of course that’s what the site will be.
Described by Wired Magazine as “Apple’s insanely great (or just insane) new mothership”, the site opened for business officially in April 2015, but with estimates reckoning that it will take more than 6 months to move all 12,000 California-based Apple employees to the new 175-acre campus, this is no easy task. However, it will be worth it when the transition is complete—Business Insider have reported that the site will enjoy fruit trees, a massive fitness centre, and various creative workspaces overseen by none other than Apple’s chief design officer Jony Ive.
Even more incredibly, further reports from Huffington Post extends the picture of the multi-million-pound site to include a café that benefits from huge four-storey-high glass doors spanning its full length and that can be opened during the summer months (giving employees the feeling of al-fresco dining), as well as a stunning 1,000-seat Steve Jobs Theatre, which will be the home of all future unveilings of new Apple products.
You’d expect nothing less than this from Apple, a company so creative and innovative—it’s only fitting that they have a creative and innovative new headquarters to match. And one named after its late, great founder, no less. I predict great things will come out of Apple Park in the future, but only time will tell…