Last Wednesday, Apple has finally announced a name and a start date for their spaceship-like campus. The new school is called “Apple Park” and it will open this April. Although the campus is not yet fully finished as construction will continue until summer, the park will start to be occupied by employees by April.
In honor of Steve Job’s contribution to the company, Forbes reported that a 1,000-seat auditorium in the futuristic campus is named after him. According to Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, Job’s vision and contribution to the company goes beyond his time in Apple. It was his vision to create an “Apple Park” where all the innovations for the coming generation will start.
Aside from the Steve Job auditorium, the new campus comes will feature a visitor center, an Apple store and a cafe that anyone can visit. The rest of the campus will only be open to the company’s over 12,000 employees which include a 2-mile path where they can walk or run, a meadow, orchard and a pond in the main ring of the campus. In addition, the parkland will use 100% renewable energy from its 17 megawatts of solar panels installed on the rooftop.
According to Apple’s chief design officer, Jony Ive, the whole structure of the Apple Park is inspired by Job’s approach in engineering and design. Apple reported that the new campus connects one of a kind structures with a rolling parkland to create a whole new environment for the people that will create and work together for the company.
Apple is one of the biggest information technology firm in the world and is the second biggest mobile phone manufacturer in the world. The company employs about 115,000 employees as of 2015 and has 478 retail stores in 17 different countries as of 2016. It also has an online store, iTunes store and is considered to be the biggest music retailer in the world.
