Tomas Chlebek "It's hard to say whether the building or the mountain of dirt is more beautiful," says a smiling Tim Cook, standing in the middle of Campus 2 under construction.
All the excavated soil will later be used to plant seven thousand trees around the new Apple headquarters. Its construction was commissioned by Steve Jobs in 2009 and its appearance was designed by architect Norman Foster. The building is due to be completed later this year and will become the new home of thirteen thousand Apple employees.
As Jobs described his vision to Foster over phone calls, he recalled growing up in the citrus groves of North Carolina and later walking the halls of Stanford University. When designing the building, Foster should also have taken into account Pixar's main building designed by Jobs so that its space would encourage lively collaboration.
Thus, Campus 2 has the shape of an annulus, during the passage of which many employees of different divisions can meet by chance. "The panes of glass are so long and transparent that you don't even feel like there's a wall between you and the surrounding landscape," he says Foster in a joint interview with Apple boss Tim Cook and chief designer Jony Ive for a fashion magazine Spindrift.
The chief architect of the new campus compares the building to Apple products, which on the one hand have a clear function, but at the same time abstractly exist for themselves. In this context, Tim Cook compares Apple to fashion. “Design is essential in what we do, just like in fashion,” he says.
Jony Ive, Apple's chief designer and probably the person who has had the greatest influence on its products in the last twenty years, also sees the close relationship between the world of technology as presented by Apple and fashion. He points out how close the Apple Watch is to his wrist and the Clarks shoes to his feet. “Technology is finally starting to enable something that has been the dream of this company since its inception – to make technology personal. So personal that you can wear it on yourself.”
The most obvious similarity between Apple products and fashion accessories is of course the Watch. That's why Apple established cooperation with a fashion atelier for the first time in its entire history. Its result is Apple Watch Hermès collection, which combines the metal and glass of the watch body with the hand-finished leather of the straps. According to Ive, the Hermès Apple Watch is "the result of a decision to create something together between two companies that are similar in character and philosophy."
At the end of the article Spindrift Ive's interesting concept of the relationship between technological progress and aesthetics is quoted: "Both hand and machine can create things with great care and without it at all. But it is important to remember that what was once perceived as the most sophisticated technology will eventually become tradition. There was a time when even a metal needle would have seemed something shocking and fundamentally new."
This approach is connected with the Manus x Machina show, which will be organized by the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in May of this year. Apple is one of the sponsors of the show, and Jony Ive will be one of the keynote speakers at the opening ceremony.
