This is Apple’s new ‘spaceship’ campus (video)

Apple’s senior director of real estate and facilities presented Apple’s vision of its new campus to a Cupertino joint city council and planning commission meeting last week, including video of the projected new campus.

“Definitely the mothership has landed in Cupertino,” a Cupertino city official says in the video.

Then the city of Cupertino posted the video, and the presentation. Fast forward to about 3:35 to see the campus, as well as the architects and Apple planning personnel:

“One of the most memorable things — and perhaps vital to the project — was Steve [Jobs] saying: ‘Don’t think of me as your client. Think of me as one of your team,'” says Norman Foster, the chief architect.

The campus will house 24,000 Apple employees in an environmentally friendly building that Apple is designing to have no net new environmental impacts. It will include one of the largest solar arrays in the world for an individual corporate building and is designed to not need air conditioning 70 percent of the time, due to natural heating and cooling.

And when finished, 80 percent of the campus will be greenspace, Apple’s VP of environmental impact said.

“The idea is to bring California back to Cupertino,” says Apple’s senior arborist, David Muffly. I wonder how many other tech companies have a senior arborist. “Our plan is to transplant the most resilient trees on the campus, and augment them with even more resilient species, such as oaks.”

On November 15, Cupertino’s city council will vote on final approval for the project. There is almost no opposition to the project, so this would seem to be almost a formality, and construction could start this year.

The last word, as it should be, is from Steve Jobs:

“I think we do have a shot at building the best office building in the world.”

Hat tip: The Verge