Yahoo Finance Apple's new $5bn headquarters to open in April
Apple has announced that it will begin moving staff into its new $5 billion (£4 billion) headquarters in April, opening a futuristic campus that has been more than six years in the making.
The company said that a new 1,000-seat auditorium at the facility will be named the Steve Jobs Theatre in honor of its co-founder, who died four months after he presented plans for the spaceship-spaced building and tree-filled park in 2011, his last public event.
The donut-shaped building will be the centre of the 2.9 million "Apple Park" in Cupertino, California, near Apple's current headquarters. The building was originally scheduled to open in 2015 but like many large construction projects faced budget overruns and delays.
It will take six months to move all of its employees from the current Apple Campus, and construction of the buildings and surrounding park land is slated to continue through summer, Apple said Wednesday.
It will ultimately hold over 14,000 employees, with two miles of running and walking paths and a café and visitor centre that will be open to the public. The building is naturally ventilated, so requires no heating or air conditioning.
Jobs said in 2011 that he wanted the campus to be the "best office building in the world." He said he hoped architecture students would come to visit it for inspiration. The building's outside walls are made entirely of what Apple says are the world's largest panels of curved glass.
"Steve’s vision for Apple stretched far beyond his time with us. He intended Apple Park to be the home of innovation for generations to come," said Apple's chief executive Tim Cook. "The workspaces and parklands are designed to inspire our team as well as benefit the environment. We’ve achieved one of the most energy-efficient buildings in the world and the campus will run entirely on renewable energy."
Apple's design chief Sir Jony Ive has taken a hands-on role designing the headquarters, working with architecture firm London + Partners.
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