Why Apple’s New HQ Is Nothing Like the Rest of Silicon Valley

Why, when most of Silicon Valley is building every more transient, temporary spaces that can rapidly adapt to change, is Apple going the other way? It’s new headquarters, Apple Park, is a behemoth bigger than the pentagon. A single building, a ring that contains a nature preserve and is not at all designed the way, say, Google’s new headquarters are. The answer, as with all things at Apple, starts with Steve Jobs. When he envisioned the campus, Jobs was thinking less about the nature of modern work and hedging against change, and more about the future, and creating an iconic building that would be relevant 100 years from now. Most companies measure the effectiveness of their buildings with raw efficiency metrics: cost per square foot and vacancy rates, for example. Jobs believed there’s value in a building that’s not measured that way–how it inspires employees and becomes part of the fabric of innovation. Jobs was thinking about how great cathedrals inspire, and how great work comes from places like the great national labs of the mid-20th century. Of course all the Jobsian attention to detail and design are found in this iconic structure, too, from massive, curved panes of glass to an ingenious, energy efficient ventilation system. The place isn’t without its critics, who see it as something of a vanity project out of touch with the trends in Silicon Valley office design. One has a hard time imagining Jobs caring about the critics.