Soon, those iPhone-inspired toilets you heard about earlier this month will start flushing. Today, Apple announced that Apple Park, the company's new campus, will open this April.
The new headquarters, located in San Francisco's Santa Clara Valley, occupies a massive 175 acres. Its futuristic design features a circular main building, surrounded by what Apple says are the largest curved glass panels in the world. A nod to the rumored all-glass design for the next iPhone, perhaps?
If Apple Park sounds more like the name for a theme park or a version of Central Park, that's because it is kind of both. Inside the main building are grassy fields, 9,000 trees, and parklands with two miles of running paths. Oh, and there's also an orchard, a meadow, and a pond.
Steve Jobs, Apple's visionary co-founder and former CEO, dreamed up Apple Park before his death. “Steve invested so much of his energy creating and supporting vital, creative environments. We have approached the design, engineering and making of our new campus with the same enthusiasm and design principles that characterize our products,” said Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, in a press release about the scheduled opening. “Connecting extraordinarily advanced buildings with rolling parkland creates a wonderfully open environment for people to create, collaborate and work together."
The campus' glass theater is named after Jobs, and will sit on a hill overlooking the rest of the park.
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While Apple Park is, sadly, primarily for employees — it is the company's headquarters, after all — there will be a visitors' center with a café and an Apple Store with some exclusive products you can't get elsewhere, including mugs and T-shirts. And if that café is anything like the cafeterias at other tech companies, it will be well worth a visit.
Stay tuned for details about when the park will open to the public. Or, if you want true unfettered access to those meadows, start updating your résumé.