Apple looking into building Palo Alto prototype store?
updated 11:05 am EST, Fri January 8, 2010
Could signify new design for future locations
Apple is working on a new prototype store, to be based in Palo Alto, California, writes the San Jose Mercury News. While it does not identify Apple by name, a letter was recently submitted to the Palo Alto government, setting forth a project for consideration by the architectural review board. The proposal was approved 3-0, and detailed a prototype store to be based at 340 University Avenue, which sources for Mercury News say is indeed a new Apple Store.
The architectural firm responsible for the prototype is said to be Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, a long-time Apple partner responsible for some of the company's most prominent retail outlets, including the Fifth Avenue location in New York City. Apple will allegedly close its current Palo Alto store, and make major changes to the future University Avenue site, completely demolishing a roof and facade in order to build a new 10,700 square foot shop. The address used to be home to grocery and furniture stores.
The store mentioned in the proposal would exaggerate some of Apple's common design trends. "Fully half the function of the store serves to provide education and service to business as well as customer patrons in addition to product sales," the letter reads. "The store is a commons for the applicant's community to gather."
The prototype would also be completely transparent at ground level, with trees planted inside store walls. Helping to keep the trees alive would be skylights, serving double-duty as a form of daytime lighting. "[The transparent wall] dissolves the boundary that traditional store facades create," the proposal continues. "By not breaking the horizontal ground plane of the sidewalk with opaque wall or landscape element, for example, the street is made part of the store's interior; the pedestrian is in the store before entering it."
It is not known when construction might begin. Apple has refused to comment.
Yep
01/08, 11:34am (1 reply) reply
If all you had to read was that one paragraph about the 'transparent walls at ground level", anyone could easily tell it was written by an architect who thinks a little too much about their own creations...
testudo
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Joined: Aug 2001
Redmond, start up your copy machines
01/08, 11:58am reply
If you haven't seen either of the two current Microsoft Stores in Costa Mesa and Scottsdale, they are nearly EXACT copies of Apple Stores, just with the MS logo instead of the Apple logo.
climacs
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Joined: Sep 2001
Creative Architecture
01/08, 12:38pm reply
Forget about common community gathering, it would be another tourist attraction place from the sounds of it.
coffeetime
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Joined: Nov 2006
Night at the Roxberry?
01/08, 01:04pm reply
Remember that concept for a club where you feel like you are in the club while waiting outside?
aristotles
Senior User
Joined: Jul 2004
Architectural review board? WTF?
01/08, 02:37pm (1 reply) reply
And I thought it was just our work with hospitals in Cali that got the bureaucratic colonoscopy (it takes over twice as long to get construction started there as in other states). Got to love those central planners and "urban planners."
danviento
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Joined: Dec 2005
central planners
01/08, 04:44pm reply
Yeah, stupid bureaucrats. Things were so much easier when people could just build whatever they wanted where they wanted, without regards to any other residents in the areas, infrastructure, health concerns, etc. h***, in my day, our toilets just opened up right onto the streets of our town. And we all were happy.
testudo
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Joined: Aug 2001
You have no idea...
01/08, 05:35pm reply
Local codes have their uses, though even in Cali it's usually BOCA or IBC like most of the rest of the country. That's the nice thing about codes, once you're familiar with them, you know how to operate with them and can have just one approval submission. Zoning is also something people know how to deal with. Changing it isn't easy, but its restrictions are fairly straightforward.
Cali is different. Urban planners, who work for cities, can require all sorts of things outside of codes merely for their personal tastes in aesthetics, costing you and your clients large %ages more than the original construction cost. In my experience, this has lead to 1000's of extra sqft with no planned use, 100's of 1000's of $$ just for the materials to lengthen a building, and 1000s of man hours-worth of redesign on individual construction jobs.
Planners used to be, by-in-large, private developers who had to pay the bills for their decisions. Now they almost always work for a state or city entity and are disconnected from the cost of their choices. Even in Cali where the state deficit is starting to alarm some, I doubt planners can yet connect the dots to see how some of their edicts are part of the force driving out population and business.
danviento
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Joined: Dec 2005