Apple Park is one of the company’s most significant contributions from visionary Steve Jobs. He poured his heart and soul into the project while he was the CEO. The building has 13.7-meter high glass panes positioned throughout and in a large imposing circle. This made the space a marvel of architecture and resulted in a workplace that encourages an open exchange of ideas in a relaxed and collaborative atmosphere.
Apple Park is the 175-acre campus and houses 12,000 people. However, ever since it opened, there has been an unplanned consequence of the unique design. It has led to a number of people walking into the glass. And, this is not an isolated incident. It has happened in different parts of the building and at different parts of the day. Some employees have even started adding sticky notes to some of the glass panes to cut down the collisions.
Apple Chief Design Officer (CDO) Johnathon Ive, who oversaw the project, spoke at length about the philosophy behind the choice to use the imposing glass panes: “It’s frustrating to talk about this building in terms of absurd, large numbers,” he said around the time of the opening. “It makes for an impressive statistic, but you don’t live in an impressive statistic. While it is a technical marvel to make glass at this scale, that’s not the achievement. The achievement is to make a building where so many people can connect and collaborate and walk and talk.”
You would think these kinds of incidents only happened in comedy movies but to have them happen frequently in the office of a company as huge as Apple is something entirely different. We all know that one should never text and drive. Maybe when you are at the Apple Park you should follow the rule don’t text and walk.
The best statement came from Apple Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson. She said that the heating and cooling mechanism employed in the building’s design allows the panes to reflect the outdoor weather more realistically and about the collision incidents, she said. “That was Steve’s original intention, to sort of blur that line between the inside and the outside,” adding… “It sort of wakes up your senses.”
I don’t really see a solution to the problem other than posting stick notes on the window panes as they can’t do anything about the whole building. Our only regret is that Apple has not revealed footage of these collisions taking place.
