Seeing Steve Jobs these days is a treat. He is truly a man of respect and seeing him present the new Apple headquarters is very enlightening and his presentation is very humble.

Towards the end of the presentation it feels a little strange to see that the members of the City Council seem more concerned about their personal benefits and really don’t have any useful questions. Instead they’re asking for wifi and a potentially unsuccessful store to be placed in Cupertino.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the architecture or anything else about the presentation.

Jobs wants to build one building that holds 12,000 Apple employees on a former Hewlett-Packard property in the area between Tantau North Wolfe, Homestead and the 280.”It’s a little like a spaceship landed,” Jobs says. No kidding.

Jobs begins the presentation referring to the fact that Apple is growing “like a weed,” and that its current campus at D’Anza and the 280 isn’t enough currently — fitting only about 2,800 people. Apple currently rents buildings to house its other 9,200 employees in the area.

Apple purchased about 150 acres from Hewlett Packard, which is now apricot orchards and has corralled some of the “best architects” to come up with a design that puts 12,000 people in one four story high building.

Apple apparently is using its experience building retail stores, and will create a large-scale piece of glass if the proposal goes through. “There’s not a single straight piece of glass in this building,” Jobs says. The parking will be underground.

Jobs also wants the building to function as its own power source, with an “energy center” as its primary source of power (“with natural gas and other ways that are cleaner and cheaper,”), using the grid as a backup.

The campus will also include amenities like its own auditorium similar to Apple’s current town hall (“We’ve got an auditorium, cause we put on presentations, much like we did yesterday but we have to go to San Francisco to do them.”) and a cafeteria that will feed 3,000 people at one sitting.

“We do have a shot at building the best office building in the world,” Jobs told the Council members, “Architecture students will come here to see this.” Ideally Apple wants to move into the campus in 2015.

Found on Techcrunch.