back to article PLEASE let us build Fruit Loop Central, Apple begs Cupertino City

Apple has launched a last-minute charm offensive in Cupertino ahead of a council vote which will decide whether it can build a super-massive “fruit loop” headquarters in the city. Residents still have one last chance to make a public complaint tomorrow at a meeting of the City Council of Cupertino, California, the global home …

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  1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

    That's an impressive building, and if it winds up looking anything like the mocks up would be an asset to the area. Shame about the R&D "huts" flung to the side and the massive double story carparks for the lesser staff 1/3 of a mile away, but at least the car parks aren't 2 square miles of asphalt.

    As for the town, the impact of having a company such as Apple head quartered there is massive, there will always be a huge amount of pressure from the area's largest employer (by far), such that pretty much anything they want they get. The danger, like the mining industries in the UK (and other countries), that dominated areas to the extent they built whole towns for their workers, is what happens to the area when it goes wrong?

  2. Parax

    Apple Donut

    Mmmm Doughnuts...

  3. poopypants

    Anus horribilis

    See title.

    1. Crisp

      Re: Anus horribilis

      Surely you mean annus?

      1. poopypants

        @Crisp (Re: Anus horribilis)

        No, I meant anus. It was a pun. (Sigh).

  4. Anomalous Cowshed

    Asda v Apple planning applications

    There is a difference between the two.

    Most of the plasticky supermarkets and rubbish new mass-produced apartment / office buildings being put up in crowded Blighty are completely out of scale their surroundings and blight communities with their ugliness. Whereas this is looks like top quality stuff being proposed for a run-down lot in an office/light industrial zone in a small town which is the home town of one of the biggest companies in the world. So normally I couldn't see what anyone would have to complain about it.

    However, since The Register requires a complaint, here you are:

    The design is over-simplistic and a negation of intellectual architecture, being designed to appeal to the ignorant masses. The inclusion of trees is a clear attempt to pander to outdated populist mores that are out of step with the modern architectural canon. The lack of sharp angles and deterministic cantilevering shows a distinct lack of imagination which condemns this as an outrage to anyone with a cultured sense of intellectual aesthetics. It is, put simply, an abomination, a blot on the purity of the architectural profession.

    1. Gordon 11

      Re: Asda v Apple planning applications

      The lack of sharp angles

      But it has to have rounded corners!

    2. Psyx

      Re: Asda v Apple planning applications

      It's Tesco who build right in the MIDDLE of town; not Asda.

      I wouldn't mind so much had the big three chains not beaten to death in-town supermarkets a decade ago by crushing them on prices. Yet I note that Tescos Metro gleefully sells the more expensive items for the same price as the 'uncompetitive' supermarkets that they drove out of business with superstores.

      1. Badbob

        Re: Asda v Apple planning applications

        Really sir?

        May I invite you to visit Motherwell, North Lanarkshire?

        Huge, poorly designed and hideous ASDA monstrosity built across the road from the main shopping precinct. It has taken almost 5 years for the shopping precinct to recover after ASDA vacated the main area to move across the road.

        I don't object to supermarkets, just piss ugly design.

    3. TheOtherHobbes

      Re: Asda v Apple planning applications

      >The design is over-simplistic and a negation of intellectual architecture, being designed to appeal to the ignorant masses.

      Not bad. But you forgot to say that it brings the outside into the interior, and that it pragmatically eschews functionalist polemics in a bid to question and negate lingering anti-visualist hermeneutic biases.

      Also, it looks like a doughnut, which is a bit silly.

    4. ecofeco Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Asda v Apple planning applications

      "The lack of sharp angles and deterministic cantilevering shows a distinct lack of imagination..."

      Droll. Very droll.

      I love it.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is this still going on?

    Have they not started anything yet?

    Christ almighty.

    Bloody humans are too small.

    Do it or not. Don't take YEARS making a simple decision.

    Simpletons!

    1. Psyx

      "IIs this still going on?

      Have they not started anything yet?"

      Yeah, planning permission for huge multinationals normally goes through a lot quicker than this in the UK. But y'know: That's effective corruption for you!

  6. smartypants

    Nice building...

    ...shame about the exclusion zone.

    These mega campuses are the antithesis of an interesting city. In a real city, the general population can walk around and enjoy the architecture (or not as the case may be), and you get a mix of offices, restaurants, cafes, hotels, apartments etc.

    When your city is nothing more than a few exclusion zones housing a handful of corporate megacompanies, your city turns into a load of ghettos which you can't enter, and travelling through your city becomes a 'get in the car and drive a long way around'.

    Apple is not the first to do this. The existing site was the same thing. The city planners are to blame for allowing the street grid to be absorbed and set off-limits. The same thing goes on in London, with the desire for ever larger building plots which cause us all to have to 'go around'. At least in London, lots of developments are prevented from doing this, but the US has been at it for decades.

  7. The Man Himself Silver badge
    Coat

    I like it

    It's the ultimate expression of rounded corners

  8. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. Jemma

    And lo...

    Apple learned that the sun shineth not from the ass of Apple but from the ass of Jobs and were much vexed..

    ...and the most prescient of them foresaw working from a lockup in Luton within five years and did jump off high buildings accordingly.

    ...lo, there was much fanboi wailing & gnashing of teeth, while in the real world life went on as normal and no person even registered the beginning of the Applopalypse..

  10. The FunkeyGibbon
    Black Helicopters

    Is it me or...?

    Is it looking like the top of a massive Mac Pro? Could they be building the biggest super computer ever?!?

    http://images.apple.com/mac/home/images/promo_lead_mac_pro.jpg

    1. Piro Silver badge

      Re: Is it me or...?

      So you're saying the Apple HQ looks like a massive bin? I can see that.

  11. kmac499

    Spooks to sue..

    Let 'em build it,then get GCHQ to slap a trademark\copyright\patent thingy on em..

    The prior art being that our world class leading secretive organisation did a doughnut shaped world headquarters first.. 'to generate a great working environment and protect our investment in IP'

    Just a thought..

  12. Tim Parker

    Hatred

    "So we want to hear from people who hate Apple's new building. Get in touch and tell us why the Fruit Loop is rotten. "

    Sums up the bent of this piece quite nicely I think...

  13. Gerardo McFitzpatrick-O'Toole

    Let's see who's smiling

    When that thing takes off on course for a fruit-themed homeworld, leaving 175 acres of prime landscaped parkland.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    "Apple has always been in Cupertino...and we want to remain and grow here,"

    Now, now Apple--no need to resort to threats!!

    (Ok, that was gratuitous, but I had a momentary bout of weakness)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Apple has always been in Cupertino...and we want to remain and grow here,"

      Why the Joke Alert, in my view that's exactly what it is, a threat. Why would they mention that they "want to remain" there if not for precisely that reason?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Trollface

        Re: "Apple has always been in Cupertino...and we want to remain and grow here,"

        I was joking that the threat was that they were going to stay in Cupertino, instead of move!

  15. messele

    Wow, Jasper Hamill...

    ...born a spiteful prick or just faking it so somebody will employ the miserable little shit?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How many people used to work on the HP campus?

    If the numbers are comparable to the 12,000 Apple will have in this new building, any traffic issues wouldn't be worse than they were back when HP filled their buildings.

    Actually traffic would probably be better than it used to be, since Apple and other high tech Silicon Valley companies have done more to encourage use of mass transit, car pooling, biking to work etc. lately than was typical back when HP was housed here.

    On the other hand, if there used to be only 6,000 there, then I could see where there might be some worries about traffic.

  17. Neoc

    IBM Europe

    I lived in Belgium for a while and I remember IBM building their headquarters just a little outside the village I was in. One of the primary requirements placed upon them: no installation (buildings, etc.) could be seen from public roads. IBM built dirt-banks, levies and planted trees and shrubbery all around their campus. Apart from the company sign at the entrance of the campus driveway, you could drive by the place without knowing it was there.

    They've moved to Brussels since then, but still...

    1. DiViDeD

      Re: IBM Europe

      They did the same down here in upside down expatland. Their huge complex in Coonara Avenue, Sydney is in the middle of some of the finest new bushland you ever saw. Even on campus, you only see one building at a time, the rest hidden by man made valleys and hills.

      From the road, the entrance is a single IBM sign in sympathetic brown, framed by a couple of trees and that's it - not even a roofline visible from the street.

      Of course, Baulkham Hills council spends its entire annual road maintenance budget on resurfacing and painting the road outside IBM, but potholes are a small price to pay for such an invisible building.

  18. ecofeco Silver badge
    WTF?

    Wait. What?!

    This building that has been hyped for how many years now(?) has not yet been built? Not even broken ground?!

    The way the media has gone on (and on and on and on) about it, I expected it to have already been built and operational!

    Is the entire MSM, Apple's bitch?

  19. Dick

    One Huge Monolith is a Bad Idea

    Look back at the valley's history. This gargantuan monstrosity will be the world's largest white elephant in a few years when Apple is as irrelevant as 3Com, HP, and dozens of other former foundations of the local economy have become.

  20. Winkypop Silver badge

    Noah's Ark?

    "Apple's claims that their new headquarters will be the greenest building since Noah's Ark"

    Comparing your building design to a mythical 'boat' is not the best analogy.

    And what was so green about the Noah myth?

    And if it where even true, he'd have to shovel all that poop out that single little window.

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