The revised proposal, which was sent to the City of Cupertino lists some of the changes that Apple has made to the plans, including splitting up the entire project into more phases. Apple originally planned on constructing a 600,000 square foot area of buildings known as the Tantau Development in two phases. However, they’ve pushed that entire project into one phase that will be started on after the main campus building is complete.

Furthermore, Apple has added descriptions for bicycle access improvements at the new campus, which will come with bike lanes and plenty of bike boxes to make the campus as bike friendly as possible. Parking will also increase from 10,500 spaces to almost 11,000 spaces on the campus, and a new valet parking area, which has 60 parking spaces, will be available for events at the corporate auditorium.

Apple Campus 2′s budget is at around $5 billion, and the main campus “spaceship” building will be 2.8 million square feet, and is designed to hold 12,000 employees. Ground-breaking is still scheduled for sometime this summer, with a completion date sometime in 2016, although the project could easily see delays further down the road.

[via MacRumors]

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, anonymous sources who say they are close to the project have noted that not only did the budget go up significantly, but completion of the new campus will be pushed back. Campus 2 was initially set for a grand-opening date sometime in 2015, but since architects are researching for ways to cut back costs of the new building, the grand opening is said to be pushed back to 2016. Of course, this isn’t the first time that we’ve heard a 2016 completion date. Back in February, we heard similar rumors.

The late Steve Jobs officially unveiled plans for the new campus back in 2011, which also happened to be his last public appearance — attending a meeting at the Cupertino City Council. The new campus will be 2.8 million square feet, which is two-thirds the size of the Pentagon in Washington DC, and it’s expected that there will be over 6,000 trees planted all around the campus.

While the completion date of the new building is said to be pushed back, Apple will still go ahead and prepare for the ground-breaking. According to another source, Apple will start tearing down the 26 buildings that are currently sitting on the site at some point in June. This is the location of one HP’s old campuses.

[via Bloomberg Businessweek]

The visions, not surprisingly, were hallucinations caused by breathing in the diluted fumes that wafted from the Gate to Hell into the more open air. In addition to the pool discovery were stairs and a temple, as well as a column and a dedication to Kore and Pluto, lords of the underworld. The stairs are where individuals would watch the rituals performed by the priests who were allowed near the opening.

Individuals were allowed to release birds into the opening to watch them meet their quick fate, and bulls and other animals were often thrust into the opening as part of rituals, being dragged back out after dying via ropes tied to them. The opening has been discussed in many ancient texts, including by Strabo, who wrote in 24 AD: “This space is full of a vapor so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground. Any animal that passes inside meets instant death.”

The discovery was made by Francesco D’Andria of the University of Salento, as well as his team. The portal is still as deadly today as it was thousands of years ago, according to D’Andria, who said that during the excavation process, birds were drawn towards the warm air from the opening, only to die when they got too close. For now, the team is digitally reconstructing the location, which you can see in the rendered image above.

[via Discovery]

The spaceship campus, also known as Campus 2, was the brainchild of co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs. The building will have four stories and consist of 2.8 million square feet of space. Apple currently can fit 2,800 employees in its current headquarters, but hopes to squeeze in over 14,000 employees in the spaceship.

The circular facility will have a huge courtyard in the middle that will be filled with trees and various landscaping. In fact, Apple says that the new headquarters will be 80% landscape with over 7,000 trees, which should make any rainforest jealous. Jobs has said that the abundance of landscaping will be both beneficial to the environment and to Apple’s employees.

However, the revised 2016 opening date makes the project a bit behind schedule. Apple initially wanted to break ground last year and have the new headquarters completed sometime in 2015, but it looks like we’ll be waiting three years or so before we’ll get to see the new campus. However, we’re almost positive that we’ll see photos of the facility over the next couple of years as it’s being built.

[via CNET]

The structures themselves would first be inflated using a type of fabric to create a dome-shaped building. Then, the modified soil would be laid on top of the dome to make the building more structurally sound. Plus, that added layer would protect inhabitants from meteorites, gamma rays, and extreme temperatures.

The ESA has already created a 1.5-ton block of simulated lunar soil using 3D printing methods, and it’s made from a mixture of terrestrial basaltic rock, magnesium oxide, and a “binding salt.” Of course, the extreme temperatures and the zero-gravity state on the Moon could affect the chemical reactions with the modified soil, but testing out the printer in a vacuum proved that the concept could easily work.

Proposed locations for where lunar bases would be built are on either poles of the Moon, where temperatures are more accurate to Earth’s climate. It’s not exactly set on when the bases on the Moon will begin construction, but numerous companies are already lining up to help out with the massive undertaking, and Deep Space Industries (DSI) is already planning to have a capable 3D printer built by 2020.

[via PhysOrg]

This discovery was made public by a statement released by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and made it clear via excavation directors Anna Eirikh, Hamoudi Khalaily and Shua Kisilevitz that this was no ordinary find. It was a standard bit of archeological excavation, on the other hand, due simply to the possibility of great historical findings in the area on the regular.

“The ritual building at Tel Motza is an unusual and striking find, in light of the fact that there are hardly any remains of ritual buildings of the period in Judaea at the time of the First Temple.” – excavation directors Anna Eirikh, Hamoudi Khalaily and Shua Kisilevitz

The “First Temple” is a place The Bible notes was built in Jerusalem by the son of King David, Solomon. This construction has been estimated to have been made in the 10th century B.C., as noted by Cosmic Log, and this new structure appears to have been made quite a long time ago – to put it lightly. So sayeth the excavation directors, noting that the Tel Motza temple must have been put to use “prior to the religious reforms throughout the kingdom at the end of the monarchic period (at the time of Hezekiah and Isaiah), which abolished all ritual sites, concentrating ritual practices solely at the Temple in Jerusalem.”

Above: Archaeologist Anna Eirikh displays a horse figurine at Tel Motza archaeological site on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Baz Ratner / Reuters via Cosmic Log

This find was made near preparations for a new section of Israel’s Highway 1 and the “cache of sacred vessels” has been estimated to be 2,750 years old. The few religious buildings made in that era bare similar layouts, each of them made with similar features such as what the directors have described here as a wide, east-facing entrance where “the rays of the sun rising in the east would have illuminated the object placed inside the temple first, symbolizing the divine presence within.”

“Among other finds, the site has yielded pottery figurines of men, one of them bearded, whose significance is still unknown. … The find of the sacred structure, together with the accompanying cache of sacred vessels, and especially the significant coastal influence evident in the anthropomorphic figurines, still require extensive research.” – excavation directors Anna Eirikh, Hamoudi Khalaily and Shua Kisilevitz

Below: Israeli Antiquities Authority employee displays additional findings from the Tel Motza archaeological site. Baz Ratner / Reuters

According to The Bulletin, 500,000 addition square feet have been announced for data halls, office space, loading docks, and parking lots for the new Apple facility. Prineville senior planner Joshua Smith noted that “they really didn’t say how long they are looking at” but that Apple already owned the 160 acres that the facility would be built on.

In a bit of a twist to the developing story, the city revealed that an ancient underground stream running beneath the nearby city that Apple will help develop for the city to improve their current water system. The city suffers from notoriously low-flow wells, and the discovery of this oddly clean system will help them – with the help of Apple development funds – to make the city more viable for the future. Prineville City Manager Steve Forrester noted the city’s excitement on the project.

“We will be converting those to production wells, with Apple’s help, and we will reimburse them over time. It’s going to really be a tremendous upgrade to the system. It will give them the water they need, and it gives us … more capacity than they are consuming. It strengthens our core system.” – Forrester

Forrester noted with Erik Hidle of The Bulletin that the process is still in the works, but that unless there are any appeals or public comments submitted to the city, development will start more than likely inside the first part of September. Apple continues to work with the city, county, and state to make their enterprise zone agreement a reality. Prineville officials also noted that they’ve prepared another 160-acre parcel for future development for other smaller data centers should other companies come forward with need.

BONUS: You may remember that Apple is not the first large company to buy land in the area. Facebook already also has an agreement in the works to develop another center too. Oregon is looking up!

Traditional treated glass uses anti-reflective coatings for aesthetic purposes, the researchers point out, preventing reflections and allowing through the maximum amount of light to avoid needing so much artificial illumination. However, the human eye is particularly sensitive to blue light, and so the Fraunhofer tech focuses on allowing that through.

“Our biorhythms are not affected by the wavelengths that brighten a room the most, but rather by blue light,” engineer Glaubitt says. The coating they’ve given is an inorganic later, 0.1 micrometers thick, that exhibits maximum transmission at wavelengths between 450 and 500 nanometers, where the effects of blue light are at their strongest.

Shortages in blue light can lead to SAD (seasonal effectiveness disorder), issues with sleeping due to excess melatonin production, depression and other problems. Traditional methods to combat this include blue-LED “energy lights” such as the Philips model we reviewed last year.

UNIGLASS and Centrosolar Glas are planning to bring the specially-treated glass to market as “VITAL feel-good glass” in triple-glazed units, which would usually make the room feel no darker but which would prevent more blue light from making it through. In fact, while regular triple-glazing allows through 66-percent of light at the 460 nanometer wavelength – the blue area – the VITAL glazing will allow through 79-percent.

Future versions, however, will extend the coating to the outer-sides of the glass sheets, further improving transmission. In fact, it’s expected that UNIGLASS can achieve 95-percent transmission eventually.

The main building will be set back from the street and will be surrounded by trees, with thousands of new trees also set to be planted along the perimeter of the building and inside it as well. One of the greatest aspects of this campus is Apple’s plans to make it not a new structure that’s in any way an eyesore, but a revitalizing element for the community: “What’s currently a sea of asphalt will be transformed into nearly 120 acres of green space.” Have a peek at some pointed words from Apple to the Cupertino neighborhood here:

“The new campus site is bound to the west by Wolfe Road, to the north by Homestead Road, to the east by North Tantau Avenue, and to the south by Interstate 280. Today there are 26 aging buildings totaling approximately 2.65 million square feet on this 176-acre site. We plan to replace them with a single ring-shaped, four-story building of approximately 2.8 million square feet. We also plan to replace nearly 300,000 square feet of existing buildings east of North Tantau Avenue with 300,000 square feet of new research buildings. …

Respect for our neighbors was a priority as we designed Apple Campus 2. The main building will be set back from the street. By keeping the majority of existing trees along the perimeter — and planting additional perimeter trees and thousands of new ones throughout the interior — the building will fade into the landscape. What’s currently a sea of asphalt will be transformed into nearly 120 acres of green space.”

“We are also committed to protecting the environment. Apple Campus 2 will attain LEED certification, and we are confident it will exceed the City of Cupertino’s standards for environmental sustainability. The campus will be clean, with no manufacturing or heavy industrial activity onsite.

Apple Campus 2 will also include a restaurant, a fitness center, and other amenities to serve Apple employees and reduce automobile trips. As with the current site, Apple Campus 2 will not be open to the public. Infinite Loop will remain our corporate headquarters, and we will continue to occupy many of our existing buildings in Cupertino.” – Apple’s SVP and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer

We’ve had a couple of glances at this facility as far back as a couple of years ago, with Steve Jobs himself speaking with Cupertino on how it might be built. Have a peek at our timeline below on the subject to see how far this project has come. The pamphlet you see above and below comes from MacRumors where a tipster by the name of Hansen has provided the world with pics.

No, it’s going to be a whoping 728 feet taller. The new building, which is proposed to be near the heart of Azerbaijan’s capital city Bakou, would be 3,445 feet high. The Burj Khalifa, which was completed in 2010, reaches a height of “only” 2,717 feet. The building itself will cost $2 billion to construct. It’s set to be the crown jewel of a new area of wild development, as Azerbaijan works to create an ‘artificial archipelago’ on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

The building will be able to house an amazing 189 floors – 29 more than the current world record holder. The company at the heart of the proposal, Avesta, says that if approved it could begin construction in 2015, and would be able to have the project habitable no later than 2019. The surrounding development plans for the massive Azerbaijan expansion is expected to take about 10 years, so that by 2022 it will be the new mecca of the Middle East.

[via Gizmag]

First we’re going to have you take a look at a video which has Starck speaking about his collaboration with Lacie for a couple of external harddrives. These drives were released in 2008, this putting them well in line with lines of thought that could have made their way into the Apple design process as he did this project at once. He makes an infamous comment here, that these drives are like “brain with motorcycle helmet”, calling on the protection the drive offers the information it contains. Have a peek here:

These drives are extremely simple, work with Apple products of course, and have many of the “timeless” qualities touted by Apple products inside the last few years (for starters). These drives also have touch abilities without a whole lot of direction on the surface. Apple has pushed some boundaries of Gesture technology with their latest updates to Mac OS X as well as their mobile line iOS for iPhone and iPad. Will intuitive gesture technology make its way into the Starck Apple project this year? Count on it.

Starck is currently under exclusive contract with SLS Hotels for architecture, this contract spanning until 2022. Don’t expect that Apple will be building any gigantic structures with Starck therefor, of course. Starck has worked on automotive projects – oddly enticing designs, indeed, as well as home and office furnishings. Could Apple be getting into the furniture business this year? Not likely.

We’ll be following the Starck connection to Apple as closely as possible over the next few months – more details as they present themselves!

The $3.15 million project will incorporate a curved glass roof to allow natural light to bathe the interior and have a large open design so that the retail area is visible from the outside. The plans filed with the city reveal that it will be a two-story space with both stone and steel in its construction.

Construction of the new store at 340 University Ave. in Palo Alto will require tearing down the existing Liddicoats building and once completed will replace the existing downtown Palo Alto store. Other details as to what this new prototype store will have to offer remain a mystery. It’s possible that Apple could attempt to bring back its original retail plans for cybercafe style locations

“Our Palo Alto store was one of our first retail stores when we opened it nearly a decade ago and it’s been incredibly popular,” said an Apple spokesperson in a statement. “We are planning a beautiful new store just a few steps away, building on everything we’ve learned from our customers in Palo Alto and around the world.”

[via CNET]

We learned about the new A7 chip earlier this week and how it’ll provide not only similar performance to the chips currently sitting inside devices such as the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy Nexus, but at a much lower cost in both cash to produce and power to run. ARM notes that inside the next two years, high-end smartphones will be bumping up to A15 architecture, this allowing much higher performance, but wont exactly work out so well for current battery technology.

It’s physics though, people, physics, where batteries inside the science we understand today are simply not able to hold a bigger charge without endangering the user – explosions and meltdowns and all that. So the change must come, as ARM notes, in the processor. ARM claims that combining an A7 with an A15 using big.LITTLE processing, much more advanced apps than we’re using today will be able to be working without depleting the life of our modern day batteries any more than we are now.

Warren East, ARM’s chief executive spoke this week with Telegraph.CO.UK about the situation, saying several bits:

“The sub-$100 price-point is when we can start talking about connecting the next billion people. … We have had to do this at the right time to ensure people could make money. We could have done it five years ago but nobody would have paid us. The demand is there now as applications become more demanding. In the time it has taken chip performance to improve 10 times, battery life has improved two times. The main requirement today is more miles per gallon.” – East

With this proposed big.LITTLE system, there will be up to four A15 and A7 cores, this architecture already licensed to 14 chip makers at the time of this post. We’ll be seeing this system in play sooner than later, to be sure!

Take for instance the building that Lucasfilm is creating in Singapore. The building is what you see in the rendering here. It will be the home of Lucasfilm in Singapore and is already under construction and set for completion next year. The building looks like a giant Sandcrawler. I always thought that building would be the scale of a Sandcrawler in the real world. The building will have animation studios and house ILM Singapore and LucasArts Singapore.

The building will also have eight floors of retail office space and retail shopping space will be included on the first floor. There will be a public park area, which appears to be under the building as well as an elevated public garden. The building will also house a data center, production capability and a 100-seat theater inside.

The new structure of the cube entrance will use only 15 panes of glass instead of 90. This makes for only two vertical seams on each side. The original cube was already the epitome of minimalism, but the rendering of the new cube shows that you can still get an even cleaner look. However, this could also mean more dead birds and bruised foreheads.

The store has remained open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, although the entrance has been covered up with grey plywood to hide the construction. It’ll be interesting to see how they plan on delivering 32-foot tall by 10-foot wide panes of glass to the site without disrupting the flow of customers and without revealing the unfinished structure. The construction is expected to complete by November.

[via Apple Insider]

“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.

[via TUAW]

This technology will give builders and architects a level of control over the structural elements of their building in a way that has never before been possible. With these techniques, instead of relying on iron girders and preformed concrete columns, the structural elements can be poured into place as the structure grows. This will allow architects to build structures with forms that just are not physically possible using today’s construction techniques.

You can see the air bubbles in the sample casts in that photograph. Those are intentional. They lighten the load on the concrete without sacrificing rigidity and strength. The best part, that’s going to be done on-the-fly so that every square inch of the structure is as efficient as possible. The 3D printed structures could end up using 10% less concrete. Since concrete kilns are one of the more polluting industrial structures, I call that a win for pretty much everybody.

Check out Neri’s website here.

[via Technology Review]

Unfortunately the house – once owned by the UK National Trust, but then sold off privately – isn’t open to the public, but that hasn’t stopped some photographers from getting in and taking photos of the eerie mansion. There are some amazing photos by cybergibbons, LargePig (responsible for the image above) and paolo999 showing not only the domed room but the various passages, shaped like something out of a science fiction film, as well as underwater routes that lead up to a private island.

The fact that the billiard room – which is apparently submerged just below the surface of the lake – has managed to keep the water out for over 100 years is more than impressive. Now excuse us while we attempt to build a mini version using LEGO in the bathtub.

[via Geekosystem and via Twitter]

The LO2P design is a combination of a recycling center, huge wind turbine, particulate filter and collector, and a giant biofuel-producing greenhouse. Wow. It was specifically designed to address the pollution that’s spiraling out of control in one of India’s fastest growing urban centers, Delhi. As the population booms, so does the number of automobiles on the roads. The idea that Atlier CMJN’s team put forward is to use the materials from recycled cars to construct the tower.

The Flat Tower is a dome planned to be built in a Rennes, France industrial center, but the team says that it can be easily adapted to fit in any medium-sized city in the world. The dome spans a planned urban park or other greenspace to keep as much vegetation on the ground as possible. Cell-like holes perforate the entire structure. These allow light and air to get to the interior space, and the relatively large surface area of the Flat Tower easily allow for rainwater cachement or solar energy collection systems to be installed.

Yheu-Shen Chua’s re-imagining of the Hoover dam is an interesting case. It’s a marriage between a hydroelectric dam and a skyscraper. The tower would actually be suspended from the dam and would hang down the 700 foot drop into the Black Canyon. Currently, the dam, gallery, and bridge are seperate structures around the area. Chua’s design would integrate them into a single structure, bringing every purpose: travel across the Colorado River, damming the river, and tourism, together into a single superstructure. The hanging tower would be the viewing gallery and would also contain a vertical aquarium, probably containing fish from the Colorado River itself.

[via eVolo]

You walk in the front door to your brand new house, you haven’t even slept here one night yet. The glow of your Taewon Hwang designed home-lighting-panel illuminates your entry with a soft glow. You toss your keys on the hook next to the door and press the three different buttons to illuminate your path to the kitchen. Taewon Hwang imagines an intuitive design for whole-house lighting systems able to be controlled from custom panels set anywhere in the house.

[via Yanko Design]

Environmentalists in Germany have condemned the tunnel project for its potential damage to the habitats of whales and seals. Tunnel-advocates contend that this method is actually more “green” than the originally planned bridge. The 18-kilometer tunnel will allow motorists to drive from Copenhagen to Hamburg in just three hours.

Denmark plans to bear the brunt of the project’s expense, but the Germans will need to pay between 800 million and 1.7 billion euros to connect their infrastructure to the tunnel. Chump change, considering how much trade and tourist exchange the tunnel is expected to drive. Denmark expects to recoup costs via tolls in a mere 30 years.

They assume flying, auto-driven smart cars won’t be ubiquitous by then. Way to be a buzzkill, Sweden.

[Via DW-World.de]

What else would it be?

Of course the whole interior of the house is green as it can be, designed to make the most of everything including energy and light (hence the giant windows.) Two electric cars “come with” the house too, both of them getting all the power they need from the houses energy intake. After that as well as all the energy you’ve used in your day-to-day, apparently there’ll be even more left over, this energy then available for you to sell to the city power companies for a profit. Basically it seems like this house is the greatest thing since solar power was harnessed in the first place. Will it work the way they say it’ll work? Check back in the middle of next year – that’s when they say it’ll be done and ready to go.

[Via DVice]

The site’s set up so you can either be a buyer (free) or a seller (15% fee) and work your skills to make a bit of cash. More than likely the people who run the site will be less than willing to host your “escort” services, but it appears that basically anything else is up for grabs. Want a San Francisco Architecture tour for $20? Yes! Want to learn how to twist balloon animals for $120? Maybe not. Take a peek if you live in Southern California (presumably open to more areas soon), or set up a request for experiences you’d like to see for sale in the future.

[Via Skyara]

Designed by Ben Rousseau and Ian Douglas–Jones, of the UK-based Extreme Design, the new room is called the Legacy of the River, and it was created to bring the world of TRON to life. Just, in an ice hotel. The new room is part of the Art Suite within the world’s largest ice hotel, which is located in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden. The designers used “futuristic” lighting sources, which are aimed to use far less power and energy than traditional lighting, throughout the room, as well as through the furniture itself.

Here’s what Douglas-Jones had to say about the project:

“We are both massive TRON fans, so the timing of the release of Disney’s new 3D high-tech adventure, TRON: Legacy, this month was absolutely perfect. The suite itself takes most of it’s influence from a nightclub scene in the film involving one of our favorite music artist Daft Punk, who wrote the score for the film.”

Check out the video below to see the room, and some of the set-up process that went into it. And if you’re interested in stopping by, or staying fo awhile, the room will officially open tomorrow.

[via Design Boom]

The tower will stand 984 feet, which will officially make it the tallest building in the city. The designers must have decided at some point that getting to one of the restaurants in this tower wouldn’t be awesome enough if patrons had to do it on an elevator, so instead helium-filled balloons, that will be powered by propellers have been decided upon instead.

And, just like any modern tower, there’s not going to just be apartments and condos in there. The designers have included spaces for museums, restaurants, and conference centers. And while this is just a concept image, above, the final design is said to be close to this. Construction is set to kick off in 2012.

[via DVICE]