CUPERTINO — In Apple Park’s newly opened Visitor Center, every little detail was scrutinized and perfected — even down to the handrails of the staircase.
Built with quartz, the handrails have no corners or dividers. Apple Park’s architects smoothed out the handrails inside the building so they feel like holding an iPhone.
“We tested out the ergonomics of the handrails over and over again,” said Ben Dobbins, an architect at Foster + Architects, which designed Apple Park. “We went through many test runs.”
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs presented his vision of Apple’s new campus, detailing the immense ring structure that employees now occupy, to the Cupertino City Council back in 2011, just four months before his death. Six years later, dozens of Apple employees and fanatics flooded into the center amid applause from Visitor Center employees, all clad in red shirts. The center opened Friday.
The Visitor Center, which sits across North Tantau Avenue on the east end of the campus, is Apple’s designated portal to Apple Park for the public. It allows tourists to see the campus from a rooftop deck and enjoy special Apple swag at the store downstairs.
One of those items is a nondescript baseball cap without any logo, available in black, gray and white. The catch? The button at the top of the cap is missing to allow headphones – specifically, Beats headphones, which are partnered with Apple — to slide onto your ears without a hitch, according to Enrique Atienza, senior market director at Apple retail.
Except for the Visitor Center, the public is not allowed inside the 175-acre Apple Park without an invitation. The campus was partly opened in September to press and VIPs, who congregated at the Steve Jobs Theater for the unveiling of the deluxe iPhone X.
Like the theater, the Visitor Center is surrounded with tall glass walls and a rounded roof. The building cost $108 million to construct and is equipped with a retail store, a cafe, and a space for an augmented reality view of Apple Park.
An all-white topographic scale model of the campus comes to life through an in-house augmented reality iPad app. Once the iPad’s camera is pointed at the map, it colors in the campus, filling it with orchards and trees and information about Apple Park and its structures. In the app, the time of the day can be adjusted to show how sunlight reflects on the campus, as well as the energy expenditures and airflow through the campus.
“Inside the Visitor Center, you’ll find an incredible augmented reality experience where you can learn more about Apple Park, its design and its innovations,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the September event.
Neighbors of Apple Park — including those in Sunnyvale’s Birdland neighborhood, where some residents told this news organization they had endured construction noises and related issues for years — were invited to an advance opening on Thursday afternoon. They were asked to bring photo identification and allowed to bring three people with them.
