Jony Ive on Apple Park and his unique, minimalist W* cover

This is the first close-up and large-scale observation of the world’s most watched new building. It is said that this new building will cost about US$5 billion.

Designed glass, aluminum, limestone and concrete rings and Apple’s new headquarters. Guests climbed along the man-made mountain, which is part of a new 175-acre undulating landscape that was once a parking facility and bland company sheds, most of which were owned by HP. This carefully designed terrain is California’s fantasy. It is gentle and rich. It is the land carried by the earth moved out to pave the earthquake-proof foundation of the new building. 9,000 trees are planted, including cherries and apricots. , Apples, persimmons and pears.

According to the intent, all these trees meant that this new 2.8 million square foot building was never fully revealed. You only see part of it, and its huge curve never appears. Considering the altitude, it is not two of the four floors. During most of the construction of the site, drones buzzed and, of course, renderings. However, nothing can prepare you for its boldness. Still its science fiction drama. As promised, this is a huge starship landing in Cupertino.

The keynote speech will be held at the new Steve Jobs Theater, which itself is a little miracle of engineering, ingenuity and attention to detail. "If the whole project is a small town, then this is the city hall and jewelry." Foster + Partners partner and one of the chief architects of Apple Park Stephen Belling said. On the ground, the theater is basically a circular glass rotunda with a diameter of 165 feet without visible support. "At first there was only one idea: "Let us have a hovering roof", but this roof floats in the landscape," Bellin said. "This has always been the most difficult period of my career."

Between the glass walls of the theater, a three-quarter inch aluminum strip contains a network of 44 ducts that carry electricity, data, and sprinkler systems. The carbon fiber roof was tested in Dubai, built and unbuilt, and it is manufactured in the same way as the hull of a racing yacht, and weighs only 80 tons. Behring said: "This is the first time in human history to do this." "This is the largest carbon fiber roof of its kind in the world. If you really want to achieve such a goal and make it look easy, you must Go all out. This really means doing something that has never been done."

Behring's excitement and pride in the theater and his brother are obvious. But he quickly realized that it was a collaborative project at every stage. "Everything in the theater, every detail, everything you see around is a fully integrated collaboration with Jony Ive (Apple’s chief design officer) and his design studio. In the past nine years, we have almost Become one. We have been chatting together, sitting down and sketching. This is not a Foster + Partners building."

From the open space on the ground, you can reach the auditorium on the curved limestone staircase, which is carved with recessed handrails on one side and gently sloping slabs on the other side. Behring said: "The whole space should make people feel carved. It is a carved handrail in a carved space." (Like a recessed handrail appeared in the redesigned

Behling said that other ideas and details in the theater and main building are permeating more Apple flagship stores designed by Foster + Partners. ) The 1,000-seat auditorium itself has Poltrona Frau light brown leather chairs, and the curved wooden floor behind the stage is as large as the space in front. It can show any situation Apple will encounter in the future. This will be solved in a new infinite loop downhill.

A few weeks later, the press disappeared, and the main building called "The Ring" is still the center of the huge construction work, although the work must now be completed. The building is essentially a tower of 50 to 60 stories, with its sides inclined in a circle. But tipping and twisting are everything.

The rest is four levels of horizontal flow. The depth of the ring is less than 200 feet, which means it is vaguely visible from the outside, and the ominous things are filled with natural light inside and open to the surrounding environment. The building will house 12,000 employees in the same department; as you move around, it repeats structurally eight times. You can walk around the three-quarters of a mile inner corridor on the inner edge of The Ring. The 800-foot-high, 45-foot-high curved glass panel on the facade of the building manufactured by the German company Seele means that you can enjoy the view of the park and the Santa Cruz Mountains, and you can see the 30-acre courtyard when you enter Orchard and oak trees, a large pond and pergola for outdoor dining. The view of the inner edge of the building also uses solar panels on the roof, which will meet 80% of the energy demand of the building. These panels and the natural ventilation system (except under extreme conditions) keep the building comfortably at a temperature between 68 and 77°F, and other factors (such as the use of recycled wood) mean that the building has obtained LEED Platinum certification .

Sometimes, the project attracted 250 Foster + Partners architects, involved extensive transatlantic travel, and established a permanent outpost to work with Ive's industrial design team. But if the details are set by Ive, then the grand vision should also be attributed to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who first met with Norman Foster in 2009. And was swallowed by Apple Park in the last two years of his life (he died in 2011). The vision is to make work as much as possible as walking in the park. More pragmatically, this is to bring together a group of employees gathered in 100 independent buildings, and then arrange integration and collaboration level content. 

The office space in The Ring is configurable. The team can choose whether to work in a separate office or open space. Each floor in each section has a central area with oak conference tables and glass whiteboards that can be opened to display a huge TV screen. Plan and design more random interactions to occur in the circular corridors and stairs (there are 32 in the building, which is a special pride for Ive and Foster + Partners architects). Each part also has a central atrium. However, the real center of the building is the cafe, which can accommodate 4,000 people and is one of the largest kitchens in the United States. On the outer edge, two 85 x 54 feet movable glass doors were designed to open the space with the natural goodwill of the bay area.

A day later, Apple’s chief design officer was sitting in a suite at the Carlisle Hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where there is the least apple pie, all the elevator operators wearing white gloves and the chic of the early 20th century. Ive, 50, is physically strong, but soft in spoken language, as warm and cute as his reputation implies. According to his own admission, he was excited about the new building and its possibilities. And those well-designed views. 

Understandably, he is sensitive to the situation of a transparent, reconfigurable campus that needs to be transparent and reconfigurable at some point in the future, because they doubt that certain aspects of the building are outdated, single, inflexible, and fixed nonsense: buildings can Adapt and change, and be more open to their surroundings in their communities (see

Facebook headquarters,

On-the-job cooperation with

with

, And Amazon's urban campus in Seattle). For Ive, the flexibility of Apple Park is built-in, so there is no need to show it. He said: “I don’t think it’s necessary to clearly state its flexibility, but flexibility is definitely as powerful as a building whose main story is “Hey, you can reconfigure”. Our buildings are very configurable and you can create them very quickly. Large open spaces can also be equipped with many smaller private offices. Architecture will change and will continue to evolve. And I’m sure that in 20 years, we will design and develop completely different products, this is the only one It will promote the development and changes of the campus. In fact, I am more interested in seeing the scenery, which is a very important function."

Infinite Loop, the former residence of Apple, is a place where different buildings are scattered, and The Ring is a unified whole. When Apple's secrecy culture becomes a reality, it is easy to see this new closed loop. Yves can easily defend this culture. Apple does not have a "lunar shooting" department and has publicly announced its ambitions to treat cancer or build a new Garden of Eden on Mars. "We work very quietly," Ive said. "Our significant difference is that this is an important part of our identity."

Criticizing the small island of the building seems to have misunderstood what to do. This is a process-oriented architecture. Ive obviously means a new way of working for his design studio and all Apple employees. ``This is one of the things I am very excited about. Currently, there are many design studios that are physically disconnected, and now we can share the same studio. We can have the industrial designer sit next to the type designer, next to the sound designer, next to the motion graphics expert, then next to the color designer, then next to the person who develops objects with soft materials, next to the industrial designer. . Adjacent to each closed office is a very large open collaboration area. It is not just a corridor; these are large spaces that are repeated throughout the building. "

The circle is also a flat and fluid building that constantly reminds you that you are in a connected space. ``We managed to keep it to four floors. You have a very sense of space and are connected to the built structure. This is one of the reasons why we spend a lot of time on the stairs. There are many connections between the floors. Some light wells go straight down. You can see the visual connection between the floor and the stairs. "

However, the building is not a concrete metaphor made by open systems or creative processes. It is artificial. Apple's success is built on high-end industrialization. Not only have to design beautiful objects that can accomplish all kinds of new things, but also produce them in amazing quantities and consistent quality. In a sense, its new building is the final Apple product, and the materials used in some places are the same as those used by the company in laptops and mobile phones.

Ive is most importantly a manufacturer, and he is very happy to be able to use his CNC milling machine up close. This manufacturing culture is at the core of what Behling calls a "hybrid studio" created by Apple and the Foster + Partners team. Ive said: "We quickly established contacts, and one of them is that their method of solving problems is similar to ours." "We have all made many models and prototypes. We made full-scale prototypes of various parts of the building and made prototypes for inspection and exploration of materials. There are many forms of prototypes.

However, if Ive is the manufacturer and industrial designer of classic molds-like to achieve specific curves, the touch of a specific stone or brushed aluminum, the correct weight and balance of objects in the hands-he is also the most important person to make us the most important new Responsibility for the disappearance of the object. ``As a design team, our goal has always been to get rid of design barriers to some extent. We tried to define a solution that seemed inevitable, so much so that it did withdraw. "

The most advanced version of the iPhone X was launched in the keynote speech with an excellent hoopla, full screen display. Unless that is the wrong way to misread it. The point is, at least in the way we use and understand it, it is completely fluid and unstable.

I want to know if Ive missed the actual click and scroll functions of the first batch of iPods, the fixed monofunctionality, the obvious working parts, and the elegance of the design solution. But I was wrong with him. "I have always been fascinated by these more versatile products. I think the excellence of iPhone X is that its functions are determined by the software. And because of the fluidity of the software, the product will change and develop. In 12 months, the The subject will be able to do what it cannot do now. I think that is extraordinary. I think we will review it and see it as a very important point in the product we are developing.

"So even though I was so easily and deeply fascinated by the continuity and simplicity and the understanding of things like the first iPod, honestly, I was more fascinated by an object that could profoundly change its function and continue to evolve. And fascinated. That's rare. It didn't happen 50 years ago.

People will say all kinds of things about the iPhone (although other Apple products are "unbelievable" and borrowed from Arthur C Clarke; as a mobile content warehouse, the iPad still fundamentally feels miracles and enhancements in life). As a tool for creative professionals, Apple Watch will gradually move to the center stage and integrate into our behavior). But what makes the iPhone an absolute game changer is its multi-touch screen—a point that many people missed when it was released, including BlackBerry, which is largely at a price. Multi-touch technology means that a single object can become a million different things at the same time.

Ive said: "If you think of the functions provided by multi-touch, on the one hand it is so powerful and intuitive, because you can directly manipulate the content." "However, because it is not affected by physical buttons, so you You can create a very application-specific interface. That’s why the App Store can be like this, and you can have so many applications and user interfaces."

Apple has been under pressure to take off the hat of another iPhone-sized rabbit, and now Apple seems to have high hopes for augmented reality because it is a shiny new toy for developers and consumers. Therefore, Ive is now designing products that not only have almost no fixed functions, but will only be used for super-large, out-of-the-box experience and education platforms. The physical things will be forgotten. For product designers, this seems to be a difficult time, but for Ive, everything leads to this.

I remember when I was in college; this new development and a series of new challenges for designers have appeared since the launch of the Mac in 1984. The basic function of the object may change within a few seconds, and the orthodox expression function or the physical object defined by its function is no longer relevant. To me, this is extraordinary.

Now, Ive and his team must solve the next challenge. "We are a group of very tenacious designers. They are very curious and are constantly looking for alternatives. Some of them can be understood here now. Some of them are beyond the scope of current technology. They exist as ideas, and they exist for Stimulate the development of technology. Some will bear fruit, some will not."

In fact, there is no point in thinking about what Apple will do next, or whether it will eventually silence people who insist that they need to develop another game-changing product. One more thing to ask Ive. I tried. After the death of Steve Jobs, has the company lost something fundamental? of course. The completion of the Apple Park immediately commemorated Jobs and hoped to embed the most positive part of his terrible ambitions so that they would have the company's memory and learning behavior. Ive will be a fundamental loss, but he is still there, at the core of the machine, still making, making, and learning.

He said: "When I look back at the past 25 years, in some ways, the most precious thing is not what we did, but how we did it and what we learned from it." "I always think that when the plan ends There will be two products; there are physical products or services, which are what you manage to make, and then you learn everything. The power of the knowledge you learn enables you to do the next thing and make the next thing better it is good.