Steve Jobs reveals Cupertino “spaceship” campus plans [Video]

Set phasers to stunned-planning-officials. Steve Jobs has presented his plans for Apple’s new campus, describing the donut-shaped building as “a little like a spaceship landed.” The four-story facility will accommodate 12,000 Apple employees, surround a wooded courtyard and use cutting-edge curved glass specifically created for the building.

“It’s a pretty amazing building. It’s a little like a spaceship landed. It’s got this gorgeous courtyard in the middle… It’s a circle. It’s curved all the way around. If you build things, this is not the cheapest way to build something. There is not a straight piece of glass in this building. It’s all curved. We’ve used our experience making retail buildings all over the world now, and we know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use. And, we want to make the glass specifically for this building here. We can make it curve all the way around the building… It’s pretty cool.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple

Power, meanwhile, will be courtesy of an on-site natural gas energy system, with the regular power grid only used as a backup. Apple’s current facility only houses around 2,800 employees, with the rest using rented office space; this new building would allow all of those teams to be consolidated in one place.

There’ll also be in-house auditoriums for the sort of launch keynotes and presentations Apple currently has to look to external facilities to host, a 3,000 seat cafeteria and underground parking hidden from view. Apple is hoping to use the land it acquired from HP last year, a 98-acre plot, along with a previous 50-acre acquisition, repopulating the site with around 6,000 trees and creating an architecturally-inspiring “mothership” that, the company suggests, will be ready in 2015.

As potential legacies go, this probably beats the iPod.