This 112-Year-Old Company made huge paintings for Apple Campus 2
This 112-Year-Old Company made huge paintings for Apple Campus 2
before photo gallery Arco industrial designer Jorre van Ast, represents and leads the 4th generation of the 112-year-old table manufacturing company.
I am sitting inside Alves Caffè Mac Apple in Cupertino, a glass cathedral that serves private cafeteria and informal meeting area for Apple employees. Despite the clear view of the outside, you can not enter unless you are an employee or a guest. Fortunately, Design Milk offered an invitation, and I was taken into the cavernous dining room ogling the sheets precisely fitted stone, metal and wood representative of Apple aesthetic. The scale of the space is amazing when entering, accentuated by an almost empty inside at that particular time, next to the retaining tasteful furnishings inside (I approvingly notes the selection of chairs Naoto Fukasawa designed scattered).
The cafeteria is where the legion of Apple are invited to meet, eat, socialize and collaborate regardless of spying eyes and listening ears of the public. When the monitored architectural vivarium is dotted with a few isolated lunch diners finish surrounded by a green sentinel planted along its perimeter. In a quiet corner of the cafeteria is where Apple has agreed to share a little secret, this afternoon-design expected to play a leading role in the walls of the highly anticipated Apple Campus 2, aka the "spaceship ".
table
rendering of the Apple Campus 2 picture :. Apple
But like everything Apple does, a table is not just table when the most valuable company in the world decides to turn his obsessive eye toward something if necessary, if practical, yet so often overlooked. Apple wanted to provide their offices with tables with an ulterior motive :. To stimulate natural communication and collaboration within its office walls curve
The company has strategically sat at one large 9 feet long cafeteria tables, one of several designed by a company Dutch family-run 112 years-old, Arco, to make a point. For as impressive length and exactingly finished as the table I'm sitting is (the Arco Essenza table), Apple reveals that they intend to equip their new offices for 2.8 million square feet 500 custom tables by the same company, but twice the length: 18 feet long, 4 feet wide and 660 pounds, continuous seamless white oak. The closest approximation that popped in my head was a huge bare wooden skateboard deck designed for Jony Ive colossus. And if the length of the 500 tables inside Apple Campus 2 were combined, it would be roughly equal to the distance of the National Mall in Washington, DC.
These very large tables Island Pod by Arco are constructed from continuous sheets of white oak Spesshart from the fairy tale forest of Germany. There are no visible seams because of the company's innovative manufacturing technique, peeling away essentially continuous single thin sheets of wood, which is then layered in a table top.
A rendering Apple Campus 2 Main Building. Picture:. Apple
Despite their size, the tables serve a much more intimate purpose: to invite "accidental mix" among employees within the open area "pods" inside the campus Apple open areas 2 municipalities in each floor of the main building designated for employees to socialize and collaborate freely, a concept born of the founder of Apple Steve Jobs tenure at Pixar.
and Willem van Ast Arco Jorre.
We asked Jorre van Ast, the great, great grand-son of the company in its fourth generation of operation, share an idea about this ongoing collaborative effort and it took to build long tables 18 feet for apple.
apple is famous for discernment, if not obsessive eye for detail regarding the design. yet one would expect more when it comes to equip their own offices. What was the process like for Arco design for Apple
Jorre van Ast There has been a very intense and constructive collaboration. We worked closely with the Apple team and Foster + Partners on the entire development and manufacturing process of the forestry and sawmill in Germany, to choose and refine raw materials with our partner in Belgium and through all stages of the construction of our plant tables.
in Arco, we do not manufacture ourselves, but also design and develop ... so it is to "create" in the broadest sense of the word. That's where we found common ground, particularly the emphasis shared with Apple on design, quality and details. I think we speak the same language and we feel that we understand where the team Apple wanted to take this project.
Each table Pod island took about 10 months to go from the tree to the finished table. Arco has developed a new technique to take off, thin very accurate off simple oak slabs, the superposition of these continuous sheets in a transparent surface.
"When we met Jorre and Willem we knew immediately they were the right team to bring our design to the Apple campus tables. We were impressed by their experience, knowledge -how and ability to do something so simple and familiar feel special. These tables are a reference point for cooperation especially important and will serve a crucial role to get people inside the new building. We think they are the ideal solution for space we create. " -Stefan Behling of Foster + Partners
did Apple come with specifications and requests in advance, or was it more of a non-conditional invitation to offer the vision of Arco to meet Apple's needs?
our relationship began with Apple selecting our Essenza table, designed by my father Willem van Ast. While working on multiple custom versions of the Essenza they asked us to try something we had never tried before in the Pod Island table.
At this time, we all assumed would be built on the table 2 or 3 segments, in order to deal with the length of 18 feet. It soon became clear that this was a job and a different project all that we had seen
During a meeting to inspect the first prototype in collaboration with Apple and Foster + Partners, the issue was raised :. 'If it was made in one piece? Can you achieve this? They challenged us to push the boundaries of our business, we ourselves so excited and began to investigate how to overcome the limitations inherent in the way we produce tables, not only here in Arco, but for the entire furniture industry, including our partners. Design, machinery, logistics, finding the right equipment ... all this had to be reconsidered.
Worker prepares the table for CNC milling.
In addition to the size / scale of these tables, which was the most difficult application Apple has done with regard to the tables Island Pod?
Find wood in the length and quality, and selection advice as whole. The wood comes from the Spessart region in Germany. This is also where the mill is located.
We chose this wood to its characteristics, it accepts is a natural material. One of the biggest characteristics and challenges of woodworking is how every tree, every board makes a life. Sawing, drying and selection are not an exact science and requires a lot of knowledge and craftsmanship in which our German and Belgian partners play a very important role.
Understanding the collaborative intent of these terminals within Apple Campus 2, is the table design reflects the interior design itself or considered the main mechanism for initiating collaboration occupants?
as you would expect with Apple, the space is designed so that everything works together in a way that will bring together organically people. These tables are part of the creation of this experience.
A five-axis CNC machine is used to grind the underside of the table. The painting was made using a method developed by revolutionary sandwich construction Arco specifically for the project to Apple Campus 2. They accomplished this using a custom sawing technique and a huge CNC machine to reduce further and shape them parts to exacting standards.
How accurate CNC machines and drills are used to make tables? In other words, the proximity of each table dimensions are from each other?
We can mill with an accuracy of a few tenths of a millimeter. One of the things I love this project is the way it combines elements handcrafted with innovation. Of course, the temperature and humidity have an influence on the solid wood; it contracts and expands. Thus, the construction is designed so that it either allows the wood to do or minimizes the sandwich construction
Do you eventually visit Apple Campus 2 see the tables in their new home once assembled and installed?
We have intensive cooperation on several projects in which we visit each other back and forth. When the project is finished, I will definitely go to see the final result.
Table moving up the sander.
Clearing saw the following CNC milling dust.
workers use vacuum lifting equipment to move the table up to the finish.
worker inspects the surface and the wood grain.
The order of the tables Pod Island is currently in transit in 40 'x 40' high capacity transport, each piece carefully protected large wrap aluminum sealed part of each blank to keep the wood protected as they travel across the Atlantic. Finally, each of the 500 tables, alongside Essenza 300 tables, and 0-benches will be installed by crane and trolley within Apple Campus 2, where nearly 13,000 company employees come into contact with a table that has began life nearly 6,000 miles away, each as unique as the towering trees with which each was made.
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