Apple Park Vs. Googleplex: Headquarters of two giant global companies

This article will compare the headquarters of Google and Apple and explore their architecture and design, innovation, planning, perks, work culture, and criticisms the designs have drawn over the years.

The Apple Park

Home of the Steve Jobs theater, a 2.8-million-square-foot main building, a 100% renewable power source, a 100,000-square-foot fitness center, and a whopping $4.17 billion budget on the main building – the Apple park is not just a campus or a building. It’s a leviathan work of art that represents Apple’s attention to product design, green energy, and innovative technology.

Apple Park is Apple’s second campus and the late Steve Jobs’ final construction project. And while he wasn’t alive to witness the iconic building come to life, Jon Ive, Apple’s former Chief Design Officer and Job’s personal friend, named a theater after Steve Jobs to commemorate the founder’s brilliance.

Apple Park is located in Cupertino, California. The design and construction of the campus concluded in 2017, and months later, the company ushered its employees into the ‘spaceship’ building. Before 2017, Apple’s campus was located at the nearby address 1 Infinite Loop, long home to Apple’s team of developers, product designers, and other employees.

The beauty of the Ring – Apple’s new campus

The Ring is Apple’s main campus and is in the shape of a ‘flying saucer. The building has eight hundred 45-foot tall glass panels connected all around the four-story structure. The curved glass structures symbolize Apple’s philosophy of transparency, minimalism, and clarity. The structures were designed by Foster + Partners, and the 3000-plus sheets of glass wrap were manufactured by Seele and their subsidiary, Sedak. Astonishingly, Apple showcased its dedication to extreme precision by making all the glass just 0.8mm in tolerance. Sedak and Seele had to build a new tempering machine for carving out the building’s window pane and elected to curve the glass through cold bending.

Apple Park’s Ring

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The Ring’s interior has large rooms, glass walls, entryways, and wide open spaces that can be collapsed into smaller structures like shared spaces and conference rooms. In the Ring, a hallway divides the saucer into eight identical segments. And while the hallway exists in beautiful intricate loops that may make its length seem shorter than it really is, it stretches up to three-quarters of a mile, end-to-end.

In its commitment to green energy, the Ring is designed to allow natural ventilation and can run for 9 out of 12 months without additional heating or cooling. Apple also partnered with First Solar, a global solar equipment manufacturer, to provide 130MW of clean energy to the campus and surrounding buildings.