The team before us now very much reflect the realisation of the two men’s aspirations for a bespoke Apple building. Ive was intensely involved with the building’s design (as was Steve Jobs during the project’s early stages). Outwardly, the iPhone embodies meticulous minimalism: tap the surface and myriad worlds are revealed, just like at Apple Park. Seventeen years after Ive created the first iPhone prototype, the latest generation iPhone 13 hasn’t lost any of the magical tactility and sensory delight of its forebears. It’s the same with the device in your pocket. From the natural ventilation systems to the multilayered glazing, from the bespoke door handles to the 9,000 carefully specified trees, every single facet of this multibillion-dollar structure has been subjected to the kind of scrutiny most designers can only dream of. However, it is a 260,000 sq m machine of massive complexity. Inside Apple Park with Apple Design TeamĮvans Hankey, VP of industrial design, and Alan Dye, VP of human interface design, in the Design Studioįrom a distance, all is sleek and seamless, with barely a hint of what lies beneath the quarter-kilometre-long façade. Located just over a mile from the company’s previous HQ down the road at Infinite Loop, the awe-inspiring circular campus is a fine analogy for the dizzying complexity of modern electronics devices. It’s been three years since the Apple Design Team moved into its new premises. In summer 2020, Apple promised to become fully carbon neutral by 2030, decarbonising its supply chain, seeking out sub-contractors that rely on renewable energy and recyclable materials, and finding the right balance between product longevity and component circularity.
Power brings responsibility, but also the ability to instigate change.
For designers such as Hankey and Dye, the challenge is to parlay the colossal responsibilities of such a footprint into a mutually beneficial future that serves customers and shareholders without depleting resources and hastening climate change. Yet despite the millions and billions, there is still a strong sense of the personal touch about Apple’s products, a design ethos that can be traced back to the company’s earliest days. Members of the Design Team gather near the central library to discuss the Apple Watch
From television to headphones to watches, growth was experienced right across the company. Apple is a behemoth in every sense of the word, generating $366bn in revenue in 2020, over half of which came from the iPhone, the world’s best-selling handset every year since 2016 (it’s estimated that over a billion iPhones have been sold to date). Today they’re both here to talk Wallpaper* through the past few years at Apple, a time of consistent growth, both in terms of products shipped and revenue earned. Both close colleagues, confidants and friends of Jony Ive, they effectively took the helm of the Design Team after his departure from the chief design officer role in 2019. Working side by side to guide this division are Evans Hankey, Apple’s VP of industrial design, and Alan Dye, VP of human interface design. This agile but hugely significant department thinks in terms of scope, not scale. There are 12,000 employees on site here, including the Apple Design Team. The scene is a tiny cross section through Apple Park, the tech giant’s mighty circular HQ in Cupertino, by Foster + Partners. In the foreground, a conference table, placed with architectural rigour so that the focal point is dead centre of the screen. In the distance is a rectangular frame of foliage.