Apple Releases Plans for Flying Saucer Headquarters in Silicon Valley

Although many business professionals prefer anything but Apple products, the tech behemoth that recently became the world’s largest company in terms of market capitalization has launched plans to build a space-ship like circular headquarters in Silicon Valley.  The building will be 2.8 million square feet, will feature a 1,000 seat auditorium, a fitness center, and 300,000 square feet of research facilities.  The landscaping will include native plants and apricot orchards, which are reminiscent of the agricultural heritage of Silicon Valley.  Apple estimates the new facilities will house over 12,000 employees, and clean energy sources will power the site, with local electricity grids to be used only in emergencies. 
 

Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs originally received the ambitious vision for the flying saucer campus back in 1983.  Like any talented entrepreneur, he took action and approached the newly-elected mayor of San Jose, Tom McEnery, with a the plan for a shimmery glass structure surrounded by oaks and grasses.  Jobs even hired famous architect I.M. Pei, the same man who designed the Louvre Pyramid in Paris.  Although the plan fell through after Jobs was forced out of Apple, his vision never died.  
 

The city of Cupertino, California is the real beneficiary of Mr. Job’s dream.  “There is no chance we’re saying no,” Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong mused after a city council meeting where Steve Jobs was present.  What would your response be if Steve Jobs cam to your town and said he wanted to build a headquarters that looks like it belongs in outer space?   
 

“Apple has grown like a weed.  It’s clear that we need to build a new campus.  We’re just out of space.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t need the one we’ve got-we do need it- but we need another one to augment it,” Jobs argued at the meeting.  Apple purchased most of the land from Hewlett Packard, where Jobs worked one of his first summer jobs. 
 

To put into perspective the sheer size of the proposed headquarters, I did some research to see how the spaceship compares to the Pentagon.  A perfect circle that circumscribes the Pentagon has a diameter of 1,566 feet.  According to the architectural building presented below, the diameter of the future Apple spaceship will be 1,615 feet.  This means if the Apple spaceship covers more ground than the Pentagon. 
 

Below is a borrowed image from Mac Observer showing the relationships in size between the proposed Apple HQ, the Pentagon, top to bottom, a cruise ship, a U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier a U.S. Navy Blimp, a WW2 Battleship, the Empire State Building, and a super tanker.