The Apple spaceship campus in Cupertino, California may be an architectural marvel, but authorities warned the Silicon Valley company that people might walk into the glass walls because it’s hard to distinguish it from automatic clear doors.
The Apple Park
After five years, the $5 billion headquarters of one of the biggest consumer electronics manufacturer in the world finally opened its doors in January 2018. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had high hopes for the company’s new office. When the Apple spaceship campus became operational, a lot of people expressed their awe, but a Cupertino building official, Albert Salvador, had concerns about the safety of the company’s office design which houses 13,000 employees.
Apple Headquarters: A Safety Hazard
The major design flaw of the building became public after several publications including the Inquisitr reported the issue. San Francisco Chronicle obtained a transcript of calls from 911 related to accidents in the Apple headquarters. Based on the records, there were three calls placed in January 2018.
In the construction of the spaceship campus, Apple focused mainly on aesthetics. They tried to veer away from doorway thresholds and similar structures since it might disrupt the train of thought of their engineers. While the physical distractions were all absent in the new headquarters, it seems like the company has a more significant problem since their employees who are concentrating on the job at hand tend to walk into the glass panel, hurting themselves in the process.
Apple reaches a new low: its design ethic is not just beauty over understanding, it’s beauty over safety. Employees get injured walking into glass walls-well-known safety hazard. Their fixes are removed ““because they detracted from the building’s design.” https://t.co/R1x8eqD4a2
— Don Norman (@jnd1er) February 17, 2018
Salvador and Dirk Mattern with the Santa Clara County Fire Department expressed concerns about the cafeteria’s glass door. The state building code required doors to be identifiable. Foster and Partners, Apple’s architect, reportedly placed black rectangular stickers on the glass pane’s rounded corners before the authorities gave their approval.
Based on the record, three people placed calls from the Apple Park. One of the callers was a middle-aged man who bumped into the surface quite hard that his eyebrow required stitches. Apple employees moved to the new headquarters on Jan. 2, and on that day, 911 received two calls from the Apple headquarters from two men who suffered from head injuries. Another call came on Jan. 4.
Following the incidents, Foster and Partners placed more stickers on other areas in the Apple spaceship campus to prevent people from walking into the glass.
As noted by the Chronicle , none of the people who called 911 had to go to the hospital. Hopefully, the design flaw in the Apple spaceship campus gets resolved soon.
