Foster + Partners Opens the Greenest Apple Store in the World
Apple—the forty-one year old technology company from Cupertino, California—is known for unveiling technology that is often ahead of the curve . Which is to say, once Apple does something, the competition tends to follow suit. Climate scientists will hope this will again be the case as Apple recently unveiled their most eco-friendly store to date. The store will not only be filled with trees, but will operate from a handful of sustainable sources as well. Aptly, the store will be located in Singapore, the greenest city in Asia. With the opening over the weekend, Apple finally opened their first-ever store in Southeast Asia.
Foster + Partners is the firm responsible for the design. The award winning British architecture firm, which is headed by the Pritzker Prize winning architect Norman Foster , is no stranger to creating Apple stores. Over the past few years, they have been responsible for creating several Apple locations around the world. Two in particular, in London and Dubai, have similar verdant themes throughout the space.
"It breaks down the boundaries between the inside and outside," said Stefan Behling, Head of Studio at Foster + Partners, in a statement about the structure. Indeed, not only will the store have an abundance of trees inside and outside of the building, but the lines between the two will be blurred with a 120-foot long all-glass front to the facade. Above this front glass window will be a canopy, which will both enhance the store's aesthetics as well as offer customers protection from the region's tropical rainstorms. In total the store will be two-stories tall, as the sections will be connected through a pair of beautiful, hand-carved Italian stone staircases. Furthermore, the new Apple store will also feature a 34 foot by 15 foot video screen, making it the Apple's widest video screen in the world.
The staircases were constructing using Italian marble.
It doesn't take much effort to realize that Foster + Partners has become Apple's architecture firm of choice. It's abundantly clear that the firms sleek, modern office buildings made of steel and glass have caught the attention of the tech giants. Nowhere is this more evident than in Apple's recently unveiled headquarters, a space designed by Foster + Partners and set for completion later this summer .