Apple’s New Mothership Campus Has Mysterious Research Facilities

The City of Cupertino has published the complete proposal for Apple’s new mothership campus. There’s a lot of interesting new things that nobody has seen yet, like a mysterious research facility separate from the main building and the circular underground auditorium.

My guess is that the independent research facility would be the top-secret, high-security base for Ive’s design ninjas.

In fact, apart from being pretty and designed to ease the life of employees, the whole Apple Campus 2 seems to be focused on security. It’s one of its main objectives:

Create a physically unified campus community that respects Apple’s security needs (in part through perimeter protection).

The project overview also mentions security, along with “ease of use”:

Apple proposes to create Apple Campus 2 — an integrated 21st century campus surrounded by green space. This new development will provide a serene and secure environment reflecting Apple’s values of innovation, ease of use and beauty. The state-of-the-art office, research and development facilities include strategies to minimize energy demand, reduce car travel and increase the use of reclaimed.

This “research facilities” are not connected to the main building.

Good corpospeak apart, this thing looks great. The focus on the trees is especially inspiring, as is the idea of being able to walk through a beautiful environment, isolated from the city. That’s something that obviously has Jobs’s signature all over it, since his preferred way to have one-on-one meetings was over long walks.

Check out the rest of the high resolution renderings and plans for more details. [City of Cupertino's public records via iPhone Canada]

The technical specifications for Apple Campus 2.

Here are the different access paths and footpaths around Apple Campus 2.

The plan of all the installations over a satellite view.

The new auditorium is mostly underground, connected to the main building through a tunnel.

Another floor of the auditorium.

A cross-section of the Apple Campus 2′s auditorium.

Elevation renderings of the main building.

Plans showing the main areas distribution in the building.

One of the technical blueprints.

Parking space under the main building.

An elevation of the company spa.

Views from some of the streets around Apple Campus 2.

Views from some of the streets around Apple Campus 2.

Views from some of the streets around Apple Campus 2.

The before and after.

This image shows the dramatic increase in trees.

This plan shows the different types of trees that are going to be used around and inside the building.

Apple Campus 2 aerial view rendering.

Apple Campus 2 aerial view rendering.