A few months before Steve Jobs died in 2011, he presented the plans for a second Apple campus to the Cupertino City Council. A YouTuber has flown a drone with a GoPro over the site of the new campus, giving us a look at the progress so far.
While it is hard to tell exactly what is on display in the video, it is clear that a lot of progress has been made in a short amount of time.
The progress is especially clear when comparing the new images from the drone with images that were taken back in April when KCBS-TV flew over the site. In the four months since then, the building has become much more pronounced, concrete has been laid, and viewers can see the building actually taking shape. It's also clear see where future tunnels will be.
Campus 2 is one of the last major projects that Steve Jobs took part in and for the design of it he recruited legendary architect Sir Norman Foster. The 175-acre campus is expected to include gardens, bike paths, a gym, an underground parking lot and a theater for media events. It will also house all of Apple's corporate employees.
While the campus will certainly be impressive, it wasn't always going to be the way it is now.
"It's interesting how it evolved," explained Sir Norman Foster. "First of all, there was a smaller site. Then, as the project developed, and the Hewlett-Packard site became available, the scale of the project changed. The reference point for Steve [Jobs] was always the large space on the Stanford campus -- the Main Quad -- which Steve knew intimately."
Apple has outgrown its current campus, and has even begun renting office space for some of its employees. When Jobs first presented the project in 2011, he said that the company was "growing like a weed."
Sir Foster has said that he wanted to include a number of organic elements in the campus, including a man-made forest that includes over 7,000 trees. As a result of wanting to be organic, Foster has said that he wants cars to be virtually invisible.
"The car would visually be banished, and tarmac would be replaced by greenery, and car parks by jogging and bicycle trails," he said in an interview.
Campus 2 will be completed in 2016, and will have cost a total of around $5 billion. You can check out the campus for yourself in the video below.
