The iPhone X was the focus of Apple’s launch event on Tuesday, but the venue was equally alluring. Tim Cook, chief executive, unveiled the device in the Steve Jobs theatre, a sleek auditorium at Apple Park, its new head office in Cupertino.
Apple Park, a $5bn campus for 12,000 staff with a vast circular building surrounding a park planted with oaks and fruit trees, is an emblem of the US technology industry’s latest craze. An industry of start-ups founded in garages wants to redesign employee activity, prodding engineers to get up from their desks and exchange ideas.
Apple Park is “a building which is pushing social behaviour in the way people work to new limits”, says Stefan Behling of Foster + Partners, its architects, in an official video. Apple is not alone: Amazon plans a $5bn second head office and Nvidia, a chipmaker, has built a two-storey office with spaces at its heart to “spark collisions”.