Vision to reality

In 2006, Apple announced to the city council of Cupertino, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, that they had bought a range of properties, with the aim of building the Apple Campus 2. The British architect, Norman Foster, collaborated with the renowned Jony Ive to design a campus that would live up to the visions Steve Jobs had for the new Apple headquarters.

The plans eventually became even more ambitious, and Apple started buying additional properties through the company Hines Interests, without disclosing that it was in fact Apple who was the buyer. This was done in an attempt to avoid prices skyrocketing if the previous owners knew that Apple needed the properties in order to start construction of their new campus.

May 20, 2012

After all the necessary properties had been acquired, construction could start. Step one was to remove the old buildings.

June 6, 2014

The main building, often referred to as the "spaceship", was to be a 262,000 m² ring-shaped structure.

May 29, 2016

Landscaping was done with an aim of giving the employees a connection to nature, with orchards, meadows, a pond, and more than 9,000 trees.

May 25, 2020

The final cost has been estimated to be more than $5 billion, making it one of the most expensive buildings in the world. Although Steve Jobs didn't live to see the result, the campus did reach an impressive scale, which we can only hope would have met his expectations. If nothing else, the 1.5 years of discussion on the right door handles, which included multiple revisions, at least lived up to his attention to detail.

Monitoring the globe

Time-series maps can be used to see how large construction projects unfold. If you want to investigate areas other than Apple Park, you are very welcome to try downloading your own images. Head on over to https://download.atla.ai/ and give it a go, and feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] if you have any questions or would like to hear more.