Apple's ungrammatical brand mantra, “think different,” flatters the proud individuality of its loyal consumer base. It also goads Apple's own designers to out-perform their last inventions.
Though their products are produced in the same assembly line as everybody else's, few other technology companies have so succeeded at making such irresistible hardware that the very design of the device changes how Americans live their lives. There were laptop computers and MP3 players long before Apple made them, but it is their combination of intuitive software and sleek, sexy design that causes droves of fans to camp outside the night before a store opens.
Apple's latest New York store, a devotee temple to that cadre of loyalists, represents the next iteration of the company's thinking in three dimensions. In stark comparison to the looming black-granite Death-Star-looking IBM building just blocks away, this new Apple store is an intriguingly innocent-looking box of light. Apple's design statement here seems to be: Dude, a square light bulb is rad enough.
It all begins at the entrance, as most store experiences do. But this entrance is a 32-foot glass cube sitting atop the public plaza in front of the General Motors building on Fifth Avenue between 58th and 59th streets. The rest of the store is below ground.
Extraordinarily, this lightbox is structurally dependent on transparent beams of annealed glass. Stainless steel rivets link it all together, but it's the 5-ply laminated glass that is pulling off this impressive magic trick designed by James O'Callaghan (now a partner with Brian Eckersley at Eckersley O'Callaghan Structural Design). Ingeniously, the structure functions as a protruding oculus, allowing natural sunlight to pour into the majority of the retail floor below by day and, by night, as a beacon for the bleary-eyed who can consult the Genius Bar with their technical emergencies 24/365 – a promise etched into the glass walls.
Once inside the cube, shoppers descend to the subterranean levels via a pneumatic tube-like elevator or the now-iconic Apple staircase. This store's glass stairs, like ones in its other major flagship stores, have a technical patent with Steve Jobs' name on it. Seele GmbH & Co. (Gerthofen, Germany) conducted extensive safety and seismic durability tests before it built and installed all the staircases.
Erecting a new building of unusual construction in New York is never an easy proposition. The city is famous for never sleeping, so major construction and oversized deliveries of structural beams, glass and metal panels often have very narrow time windows when there's less traffic.
Real estate is at such a premium that even when one goes underground, there is rarely much room to maneuver. Though there had previously been a concourse level of shops below the GM Building, designers still wanted to increase the ceiling heights 30 inches, to 11 feet. So Shawmut Design and Construction (Boston) had to coordinate and construct the retail fit-out within the recently enlarged concourse level. Also, every morning at 2 a.m., a fountain on the plaza gets drained and a stage is moved into place for the “CBS Morning News.” After shooting that sequence, the platform is removed and the fountain is back to spouting by 10 a.m. In other words, this was not a peaceful site at which to build.
The retail experience begins on the outside, at the plaza ground level. Apple made sure the area has been rigged for Wi-Fi/airport card laptop usage. And there are plenty of brushed stainless-steel café tables made to match the metal paneling in the store, along with moveable garden seating that makes it an appealing rest stop at one of the best people-watching sites in the city. Tranquility is reinforced by patrolling security, making sure the chairs don't disappear, that vagrants don't get too comfortable and that skate-rats don't terrorize shoppers and chip the marble steps.
The Apple attention to detail is evident everywhere. Outside, there is a drip-pan-like grate to help keep water, dust and soot out of the store. Inside, the elevator beams visitors down into another dimension. The glass stairs, which swerve around the elevator shaft, are laminated with a panel of diamond-tread molded glass.
After walking through New York's dirty, street-vendor-packed, pedestrian-clogged sidewalks, it's a relief to arrive in Apple's orderly universe. There are cleaning personnel on site around the clock. The floors need to be cleaned every 12 hours or so because of the high foot-traffic.
Instead of seamlessness, which was not possible, all the stainless steel panels are set a precise 3⁄32 of an inch apart, creating a striking contour outline for all the planes of the interior. The Petra Sienna floor pavers radiate out from the elevator.
Apple has indeed polished its brand until it shines.