The Stack On Software and Sovereignty · 第 186 页

Perhaps the boldest (not necessarily best) design statement made by a Cloud platform is Campus 2 in Cupertino, as proposed by Apple and Sir Foster during Steve Jobs ’ s last years (though when Jobs pitched the plans to the Cupertino City Council, he neglected to mention with whom exactly his vision sought collaboration; Foster was not named). Plans show a giant toric “ spaceship ” (Jobs ’ s own word) landed among apricot groves in apparent prelaunch posture. ⁶⁷ The design harkens to Eero Saarinen ’ s Watson Research Center for IBM (1961) and the many mid-twentieth-century suburban corporate exurban campuses, but instead of a set of buildings, Foster ’ s closed ring fits an entire campus inside one curving arc. ⁶⁸ To many, it resembles an austere relative of Herzog and de Meuron ’ s Allianz Arena (2005) as transplanted from Munich into more bucolic Northern California or, better, a cult-inspired interplanetary escape craft straight from a Michel Houellebecq novel. ⁶⁹ The vast closed (infinite) loop contains 2.8 million square feet of interior space, but appears to have no face to the outside world, no real front or back, beginning or end. Perhaps this replicates the looped border of the Westphalian state or the utopian island. Descriptions used in the proposal like “ integrated ” and claims that it will “ create a physically unified community ” rather understate the insularity of this habitat with its central plant, cavernous underground, and off-site parking. Once employees have made their way back to the surface from the subterranean automobile rump state, they will look out and see only the trees for the forest. Withdrawn into this island package, Apple citizens will enjoy the benefits and suffer the fragilities of the reserved enclave. ⁷⁰ Bunkers imply security, control, purification, and impenetrability, but like the walled garden of iOS itself, it can also suffer from having to serve as both platform and content at once. As others have observed from the distant sidewalks across the entrance roads, this sort of suburban walling off of a corporation ’ s population may be less futuristic than it is a throwback to 1950s campuses. As opposed to the old “ creative class ” accommodations of urban contact and stimulation, here Apple recedes and secedes into the controlled space of the curated megastructure. As the price of total interiority is a “ disappearance of the outside, ” for utopian platforms like Apple ’ s, the price of that curation is closure. ⁷¹

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City Layer