In September, Apple unveiled its typical suite of September launches: the iPhone 16, a satin black Apple Watch Series 10, and new colorways for the AirPods Max among them. The tech behemoth also teased a curious addition to its highly secretive Cupertino campus, the enormous ring-shaped Silicon Valley headquarters designed by Foster + Partners. Unlike the main building, which is rarely seen beyond the likely forbidden iPhone snapshots employees post to Instagram, the Apple Park Observatory seems much more friendly to prying eyes. According to John De Maio, Apple’s global head of design for real estate and development, the building will serve as a “contemplative space” where the company can host launch events and showcase its latest technology.
“Contemplative” seems to be the operative word. Embedded into the campus’s remote outer hillside, the structure’s subterranean site and soaring light-filled interior shares more in common with a temple than a tech office. Visitors arrive through a domed entrance hall crowned with a ten-foot-wide oculus. From there, a stone sliding door leads to a main event space sporting a giant window “portal” that frames verdant views of the campus. The same natural stone, terrazzo, and blond wood elements typical of the serene Apple Stores that recently opened in Kuala Lumpur and London’s Battersea Station also appear, though Gensler developed and finished this building instead of the company’s go-to architecture firm Foster + Partners. In any case, the cave-like construction also meant uprooting close to 90 existing trees, but they were replanted to “preserve the site’s old-growth meadow landscape.”
“When we built Apple Park, we wanted the entire campus to be seamlessly integrated into the landscape, and this building follows the same approach,” De Maio told Dezeen. “With its stunning views of the campus greenery and the mountains ringing the horizon, The Observatory is truly an extension of Apple Park, showcasing the best of California and the best of the natural environment around us.”
