News: a YouTube user has uploaded aerial footage of the construction site for the Foster + Partners-designed Apple Campus shot using a GoPro video camera mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle (+ movie).
YouTuber JCMinn has uploaded a video showing footage of the construction site of Apple's new offices – known as Apple Campus 2 – in Cupertino, California.
The eight-minute film was made using a Phantom 2 flying vehicle produced by DJI and a GoPro Hero 3 camera. Footage was sent live from the device to a pair of Carl Zeiss video goggles worn by JCMinn via a transmitter also produced by DJI, allowing him to see what was filmed as he controlled the drone.
The footage shows a huge circular trench, which dwarfs the nearby houses in the residential district that abuts the site.
Concrete foundations for the ring-shaped building by British firm Foster + Partners are visible inside the trench.
The $5 billion project is due for completion in 2016 and will include one of the largest photovoltaic arrays in the world.
Last year, Norman Foster revealed that he took the job of creating a new home for Apple after receiving a personal call from late Apple CEO Steve Jobs in 2009.
"For me this project started in the summer of 2009," said Foster in a movie published by Cupertino City Council. "Out of the blue a telephone call. It's Steve: 'Hi Norman, I need some help.' I was out there three weeks later."
"The first point of reference I think for Steve was the campus at Stanford, his home territory. And also the landscape he grew up with; the fruitbowl of America."
According to the design team, the site will be 80 per cent green space once finished with a 260,000 square metre building that aims to change the social behaviour of staff in the workplace.
"This building allows us to put 13,000 engineering and creative types in one location under one roof thus creating the idea factory that will create future generations of Apple products for years to come," said Dan Whisenhunt, Apple's senior director of real estate & facilities.