Just like Beyoncè turned her pregnancy announcement into a PR campaign, so Apple has released their new headquarters as if it were a new product.

And, just like Bey’s pregnancy was quite personal, Apple’s announcement is too – it comes just in time for founder Steve Job’s birthday (which is today, February 24, happy happy).

Here’s some info from their press release:

Apple today announced that… the company’s new 175-acre campus, will be ready for employees to begin occupying in April. The process of moving more than 12 000 people will take over six months, and construction of the buildings and parklands is scheduled to continue through the summer.

Envisioned by Steve Jobs as a center for creativity and collaboration, Apple Park is transforming miles of asphalt sprawl into a haven of green space in the heart of the Santa Clara Valley.

We have watched the campus grow, from a mere cement seedling into what is now, but we knew it as the Apple “Spaceship” Campus.

Scrap that noise, here’s to introducing Apple Park (styled, in true Apple form, as Park):

How cool is that moonrise?

The location will be pretty much inaccessible to the public, but we’re pretty sure you guys know where you’re getting your Apple goodies anyway:

Designed in collaboration with Foster + Partners, Apple Park replaces 5 million-square-feet of asphalt and concrete with [roughly 5 250 000 square feet of asphalt and concrete topped with] grassy fields and over 9 000 native and drought-resistant trees, and is powered by 100 percent renewable energy.

With 17 megawatts of rooftop solar, Apple Park will run one of the largest on-site solar energy installations in the world [that’s up from 8 megawatts originally planned].

It is also the site of the world’s largest naturally ventilated building, projected to require no heating or air conditioning for nine months of the year.

But we know all that – this is what we didn’t know and why Apple Park is more like a product than anything else:

Apple’s novel approach to the building took many forms. Architect German de la Torre, who worked on the project, found many of the proportions – such as the curve of a rounded corner – came from Apple’s products. The elevator buttons struck some workers as resembling the iPhone’s home button; one former manager even likened the toilet’s sleek design to the device.

But de la Torre ultimately saw that Apple executives were not trying to evoke the iPhone per se, but rather following something akin to the Platonic ideal of form and dimension. ”They have arrived at design principles somehow through many years of experimentation, and they are faithful to those principles,” de la Torre said.

Much excitement.

While one cannot exactly buy Apple Park, you can get all of their products from the original and best Apple dealership in the country, Digicape.

For reals.

Happy Birthday, Steve.

[source:treehugger]