Holy Batman! How is this for commitment? Alex Westerlund spent 413 hours in order to build a Minecraft replica of the new Apple Park campus. Apple is set to start moving employees into the actual Apple Park campus this month, so this is an incredible tribute to that. This entire thing is incredible. I personally don’t think I would have the patience to be able to do something like this. And with such detail.
But what else makes this so incredible? It’s a 1:1 full scale replica. Everything included in the campus are accurate as they are based on the construction plans themselves. Again, that takes commitment! Further, the terrain itself is accurate and based off of topographical maps of Cupertino and actual landscaping plans.
Westerlund started this project in 2015 and has handcrafted the campus down to each hill, path and cherry tree. He included 28 cafes which are spread throughout the main building, plus 2 outdoor cafes. Bringing the project total up to over 1 million blocks. You can’t tell me this isn’t cool. Even if you’re not a fan of Minecraft or Apple, this is still pretty impressive:
So how does this compare to the real Apple Park? Well, Westerlund beat Apple to the punch on this one as the real campus isn’t expected to be open until the end of April. The cost of the project is somewhere in the billions. Estimated around $5 billion to be exact. One article I read indicated that the campus has more space for parking than it does for actual offices. What’s that all about? Apparently there is a regulation in Cupertino that requires a certain amount of parking for every 285 square feet of office space. I guess there isn’t a lot of carpooling, or public transit happening in Silicon Valley.
In addition to that it is estimated that it will accommodate 14,000 employees. That’s insane! There must be like a million fire exits. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating, but come on. Are that many people even allowed to be in one place at the same time? I would question the city’s rules and regulations if there isn’t a fire issue with this, but that almost every individual needs it’s own parking space. Sure, in a world where most people drive today, this makes sense. But Apple is extremely innovative and you would think that there would be incentives in place to minimize the number of cars coming to their office on any given day.
I also question that – how many cars are going to be showing up at the office every day at 9 am? 14,000 I would guess. So, will that cause a traffic jam within the campus itself? And what kind of “footprint” would that leave on the campus itself? Huge. Literally huge. And is that kind of footprint allowed by the City of Cupertino? Sounds like it. Getting back to the Minecraft version of the campus. I think it’s incredible. Especially when you think about the sheer size of the actual campus itself. And then all the detail that went into the design as well. Again, I don’t think I would have the patience to accomplish something like this, but I always like to see people using their talents in a creative way.