
How Jony Ive Masterminded Apple’s New Headquarters - breck
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-jony-ive-masterminded-apples-new-headquarters-1501063201
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nikofeyn
i just don't understand it. the idolization of ive as a designer is truly
confusing to me. i feel a sense of stubbornness and tunnel vision in his
approach, which seems rather amateurish, for all of his designs.

for example, the article suggests ive wants movement to be at the core of the
workplace. how does endless seas of rectangles promote movement?! just look at
those pictures! there is not a single design element that isn't founded upon a
rectangle other than the overall building shape, which has little effect on
the internal use. every single picture screams monolith, which is the last
word i would associate with movement. the pictures and environment tell me a
story of grids, crowded with clusters of people. the design says "this will be
a very noisy place, both audibly and visually". nothing in the design promotes
movement or separation or any concept really.

and ive always seems to childishly defend his designs, where he basically
responds with "you just don't understand". and i like how the article states
mastermind in the title yet gives very concrete examples to the contrary in
the form of employee complaints and concerns. what was masterminded, exactly?

ive's design aesthetic is based upon gray, white, glass, rectangles. and
nothing else. what an artistic snooze fest, even ignoring the actual
usefulness of his designs.

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theoh
Ive has some kind of charisma that makes his designs convincing. It's notable
that everyone mentioned in that WSJ article (Bono, Foster, Serota) is a
charismatic, persuasive leader. Ive's work is competent, in the tradition of
Dieter Rams, not a snoozefest but part of a long tradition of rejecting
shallow styling (the major culprit in the eyes of those designers, eg at HfG
Ulm, was the exaggerated forms of auto design of 50s America)

Apple design makes sense if you see it as a cultural practice embedded in
competing traditions of design (analogous to punk vs prog rock vs ...). Jobs
himself placed great importance on developing his own charisma, a compelling
personal vision. The fact that it's largely a functional vision conceals the
seductive ideology behind it.

If you look at Swiss graphic design, like Josef Muller-Brockmann's work, it's
often just sans-serif type in a grid layout on a white background. That can be
interesting once you tune in to it. This probably sounds patronizing but I
mean to say minimalism can be just as interesting and subtle as maximalism.
Splashy, garish expression is not a long-term solution to the "snoozefest"
problem.

Having said all that, sometimes minimalism is just a way of being chic (like
an art gallery) rather than vulgar (like a muscle car). I'm definitely not
saying it's better, but the superficially dull ingredients (straight lines,
gray, rectangles) are not the deciding factor. Apple HQ may be a meretricious
display of precision and expensive design independently of the superficial
appearance.

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galonk
Finding out the whole thing is open-plan-only cured me of most of my jealousy.

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new299
That's really weird. I thought Apple liked having little secret projects
everywhere. Even having access control between teams for secret special
projects.

If it's open plan how will that happen?

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dejv
Well, there are couple of R&D buildings next to main building on campus. I
can't find much details about those, but I suspect that they will be used for
those secret projects.

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dbbk
So I just subscribed to WSJ online to read this article. Went to cancel my
subscription before it renews for next month. There's no option to cancel! You
have to call a US phone number. I'm from the UK. This should not be a thing in
2017.

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wodenokoto
you can search for the article name on facebook and get free access to it.

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dbbk
Didn't know this. I'm happy to pay though, it was only £1, but making it as
hard as possible to cancel is just insulting.

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LeoNatan25
Design over usability; not the first time Ive has made this sin. That open
space is completely impractical, and I expect a lot of people will be less
productive. Terrible.

~~~
qq66
I find the iPhone to be one of the most usable pieces of technology ever made.
I've seen 2-year-olds and 80-year-olds acquire mastery of it in a day. iTunes,
on the other hand...

~~~
LeoNatan25
iPhone's design, as in its software design, largely should be credited to the
teams under Forstall. Ive, at that point, was responsible for hardware design
mostly. Most of the principles that made iOS (iPhone OS) successful back then
remain today—in fact, it is amazing how little has changed and how relevant
the design still is.

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eternalban
I didn't get to read the article but wonder about the "Mastermind" notion.
Norman Foster is not exactly a push over architect. Was the claim that Foster
+ Partners had nothing to do with this design?

A delicious aspect of this design is how closely it resembles the English
spook central:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/GCHQ-
aer...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/GCHQ-aerial.jpg)

[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V4KSNOGfDN0/UTnFgqoi24I/AAAAAAAAAe...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V4KSNOGfDN0/UTnFgqoi24I/AAAAAAAAAew/JY5kYX0FW64/s1600/Apple2.jpg)

Let's hope form is not following function here ;)

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thinbeige
I am surprised by this article. Jony Ive hasn't appeared in any of the last
keynotes. He was just a faceless voice-over on some of the announcements
videos.

There is a notion that he spends more time with his family in the UK than at
Apple. Seems like he retreated and I am not sure how big his inpact really is.
He definitely had more influence on that project at the beginning.

Even if he is still involved with Apple, I, as a customer, couldn't care less
about Apple's Disneyland (which is also about a different skill set, the one
of architects and not CE industrial designers). I'd rather like to see Jony
Ive working on the core of Apple and not its facility management, e.g. the Mac
series, Mac Pros, native Apple displays, macOS' aging UX/window management,
heck there's still plenty of work in the iOS/iPhone department.

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77ko
As an Apple customer, I get the impression that Ive and his design teams time
is better spent designing products rather than this building.

Sure, spend billions in it, they have the money, but this article and others
suggest people from Apple spent a LOT of time on the building at every stage
instead of mostly leaving it up to building professionals like most other
buildings are done.

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maxxxxx
Looks like a big ego trip to me. The whole building looks very stark.

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joshfraser
maybe the reason Apple products have been such crap lately? they've been too
busy obsessing over their shiny new building.

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hodder
given the Google workaround no longer works, how can we read wsj articles now?

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slededit
Get a wsj subscription?

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xiaoma
That solution doesn't scale to all HN users and all sites. If there's no way
to access an article without paying, it's a pretty poor choice to share it
here.

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slededit
Its clear users here see value in WSJ articles. To the extent that whenever it
is posted someone asks how to circumvent their subscription paywall. They do
good work and create articles people want to read, I don't think its fair not
to suggest people actually pay for the content they consume.

If these articles didn't belong here people wouldn't be upvoting them.

