Apple Campus 2

Apple Park is the corporate headquarters of Apple Inc., located at 1 Apple Park Way in Cupertino, California, U.S. It opened to employees in April 2017, while construction was still underway. Its research and development facilities are occupied with over 2,000 people. It replaced the original headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop, which opened in 1993.Its circular design and extreme scale have earned a media nickname of 'the spaceship'. Located on a suburban site totaling 175acre, it houses more than 12,000 employees in one central four-storied circular building of approximately 2800000sqft. Steve Jobs wanted the whole campus to look less like an office park and more like a nature refuge. Eighty percent of the site consists of green space planted with drought-resistant trees and plants indigenous to the Cupertino area, and the center courtyard of the main building features a man-made pond.HistoryIn April 2006, Apple's former CEO Steve Jobs announced to the city council of Cupertino that Apple had acquired nine contiguous properties to build a second campus, the Apple Campus 2. The building was conceived by Jobs, and designed by Norman Foster. Jobs took Foster to the cathedral-like building on the Disney Pixar campus in Emeryville, which Jobs designed himself with the goal of keeping everything under one roof. He spent a large part of two years on the project before his death in October 2011.Purchases of the needed properties were made through the company Hines Interests, which in at least some cases did not disclose the fact that Apple was the ultimate buyer; Philip Mahoney, a partner with a local commercial real estate brokerage, noted that this is common practice in attempts to arrange the purchase of contiguous land made up of multiple parcels with separate owners, in order to keep costs from skyrocketing and not reveal the company's plans to competitors. Among the sellers of the properties were SummerHill Homes (a plot of 8acre) and Hewlett-Packard (three buildings of their campus in Cupertino), among others.