Apple campus to open in April

After years of the public watching, waiting, speculating, and constantly surveying it from the air, Apple announced early Wednesday that its new 175-acre campus will be finished and open for business in April.

It also finally has an official name: Apple Park.

The move from the company’s original Cupertino Campus will take up to six months, according to the Apple blog that made the announcement. The transition will complete an eleven-plus year process since the company bought up the land in April of 2006.

The enormous, spaceship-like, Lord Norman Foster-designed building was the last big Apple project that founder Steve Jobs initiated before his death in 2011. Apple CEO Tim Cook referenced Jobs in comments about the building design:

“Steve’s vision for Apple stretched far beyond his time with us. [...] The workspaces and parklands are designed to inspire our team as well as benefit the environment. We’ve achieved one of the most energy-efficient buildings in the world and the campus will run entirely on renewable energy.”

Apple

In years past, Cook would sometimes refer to the incoming building as the planet’s greenest, but in 2013 the Oregon-based Green Building Initiative pointed out that several extant buildings would outperform it.

However, the company does tout the transformation of “miles of asphalt sprawl into a haven of green space.” An enormous landscaping effort still in progress is one of the last touches on the roughly $5 billion project.

• Apple Park Opens In April [Apple]
• See Six Months of Apple Campus Construction [Curbed SF]
• Apple Campus 2 Not Greenest On Planet [Guardian]
• Steve Jobs [Recode]