A giant spaceship has landed in Cupertino. This summer, 12,000 Apple employees will start to move into this great disc of a building, which has been eight years coming and is said to have cost $5bn — making it the world’s most expensive office.
一艘巨大的宇宙飞船降落在库比蒂诺。今年夏天，1.2万名苹果(Apple)员工将开始搬入这座巨型碟形建筑。这项工程持续了8年、耗资50亿美元，使其成为全世界最昂贵的办公室。
Apple Park is Steve Jobs’s last, posthumous hurrah; as a vanity project it is roughly on a par with Nicolae Ceausescu’s People’s Palace in Bucharest. Jobs managed the spec as the control freak he was, insisting on irreproachable door furniture and stone from a Kansas quarry that was distressed to make it look like the walls of a Yosemite hotel he was fond of. The obsessiveness and the grandiosity make the marble that Jacques Attali once ordered when he was head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development look slipshod.苹果公园(Apple Park)是史蒂夫?乔布斯(Steve Jobs)的遗世之作；作为一项面子工程，它在宏大程度上和尼古拉?齐奥塞斯库(Nicolae Ceausescu)在布加勒斯特的人民宫殿(People’s Palace)差不多。作为一贯的控制狂，乔布斯生前对建筑规格进行严格管理，坚持用无可挑剔的门配件和来自堪萨斯州某个采石场的石头，那里的石头具有老旧的外观，可以做得像他钟爱的一家约塞米蒂（Yosemite ，加州的一个国家公园——译者注）酒店的墙一样。这种执迷和夸张，甚至让雅克?阿塔利(Jacques Attali)在担任欧洲复兴开发银行(EBRD)行长时预定的大理石石料也相形见绌了。If I were an Apple shareholder, I would not be happy. Overdoing it on the decor of the HQ is a sure sign that calamity is on its way. It did not end well for Ceausescu’s Romania, nor for Mr Attali’s EBRD.如果我是苹果的股东，我不会高兴的。对总部的装修太过铺张，必然标志着灾难即将降临。齐奥塞斯库的罗马尼亚不得善终，阿塔利的欧洲复兴开发银行也不怎么样。If I lived in Cupertino I would not be happy either. There are at least 9,000 car parking spaces at Apple Park, which means too much driving. It is better for cities to have offices in the centre, so people do not have to travel so far, and can nip out at lunchtime to spend money in local shops.如果我住在库比蒂诺，我也不会开心。苹果公园至少有9000个停车位，这意味着驾车的比例太高了。最好的办公地点是在城市中心，这样人们不用长途通勤，还可以在午饭时间溜去当地商场购物。Yet as an observer of offices, I am dancing a jig. Over the past two decades, three bad things have been happening with office design, and Apple Park puts all of them right.不过，作为办公室的观察者，我觉得欢欣鼓舞。过去20年，办公室设计上出现了3种糟糕的情况，而苹果公园更正了这些问题。First we have lost confidence in offices altogether as nomadic workers huddle in cafés and in their own bedrooms. Jobs’s edifice is a hymn to the importance of offices in general. Critics are grumbling about the white elephant the building would become should Apple go bust — but that misses the point. Apple Park screams: “We are here to stay and, given that, we’ve built somewhere beautiful for our staff to work in every day.”首先，我们对办公室彻底失去了信心，没有固定办公桌的员工们挤在咖啡店里或者窝在各自的卧室内。乔布斯的建筑从总体上歌颂了办公室的重要性。批评者抱怨称，如果苹果破产了，这座建筑就会变成昂贵而无用之物——但这并没抓住重点。苹果公园仿佛在大喊：“我们会在这里长期经营下去，因此，我们为我们的员工建设了漂亮的建筑，让他们每天在这里工作。”The second bad thing is the confusion between home and work. Fashionable office designers delight in making work spaces look like the hideous apartments of imaginary hipsters — Airbnb’s office in San Francisco is filled with spaces that look like funky sitting rooms, kitchens and even a “nerd cave”. As far as I can tell from looking at it on You Tube and reading the first review in Wired, the Apple HQ is built on the idea that work and home are distinct. There is not even any childcare on site, which is also progress. I have never wanted my employer to look after my children. I wanted to hire my own childminders and leave work in time to relieve them.第二件糟糕的事是家和工作的混淆。时尚的办公室设计师们，喜欢让办公场所看起来像嬉皮士的糟糕公寓一样——爱彼迎(Airbnb)在旧金山的办公室里充满了看似前卫的客厅、厨房、甚至“奇葩洞”(nerd cave)一样的空间。就我在YouTube上看到的情况和在《连线》(Wired)上看到的第一篇评论看来，苹果总部的设计初衷是把工作和家隔开。苹果公园里甚至没有儿童托管部，这也是一项进步。我从未想过让公司帮我照顾孩子。我想自己找保姆，按时下班，接保姆的班。Most radical of all, Apple Park is made for grown-ups. For the past two decades office spaces have been built as if for primary school children. Google has been a world leader in infantilising its workforce with AstroTurf croquet lawns and slides. In its Tel Aviv office staff have meetings in ridiculous flying pods — baskets with propellers on top. This pernicious trend — ugly, stupid and ageist — started in Silicon Valley and has spread. Even at the frumpy CBI’s new office in London, it is all primary colours, pods and fun murals.最到位的是，苹果公园是为成年人而造。过去20年，办公室空间就彷佛是为小学生设计一样。谷歌在把员工当成幼儿对待方面领先全球，该公司修建了槌球人工草皮和滑梯。谷歌特拉维夫办公室的员工在可笑的飞行舱（顶上带着螺旋桨的篮子）内开会。这种糟糕趋势——丑陋、愚蠢和年龄偏见——发端于硅谷，现已蔓延到其他地方。就连古板的英国工商业联合会(CBI)在伦敦的新办公室也全都是原色、小舱和有趣的壁画。Apple Park has turned its back on fun and is going for beauty instead. Beauty is serious and grown-up; work should be too.苹果公园不再执着于有趣，相反它追求的是美丽。美丽是严肃而成熟的；工作也理应如此。The building has two other big things going for it: democracy and greenery. Offices have been pretending to be egalitarian for decades, but as long as they are housed in skyscrapers, the chief executive is always at the top. The spaceship has only four floors and everyone in the ring will get the same view of the best thing for any worker to gaze upon — trees. About 9,000 of them are to be planted — almost one tree per person.
这座建筑还有另外两个值得赞赏的地方：民主和绿植。数十年来，办公室一直假装是平等主义社会，但只要办公室位于摩天大楼内，首席执行官总是位于顶层。苹果公园只有4层，在环形建筑内工作的所有人都看到同样的景致——树木，这也是最适合员工凝视的。这里将种植约9000棵树木——差不多人均一棵树。The only bit of hokum is Apple’s attempt to justify the expenditure. It claims that in immaculate surroundings people are more likely to do immaculate work. This is nonsense, many of the world’s finest inventions seem to have been built in garden sheds.唯一有点胡扯的地方是苹果试图证明这项支出的合理性。它声称人们在完美的环境里更有可能做出完美的工作。这是胡扯，世界上很多最杰出的发明似乎是在花园的棚子里鼓捣出来的。In any case, Apple does not need any such justification. It has money to burn and has chosen to burn it on something splendid for its workers. As a shareholder I may not like it. But if I were one of the 12,000 I would be counting the days until I moved in.无论如何，苹果不需要提供这类辩解。它有大把可以烧的钱，并选择了为员工烧钱，给他们一些美好的东西。作为股东，我可能不喜欢这样。但如果我是那1.2万名员工中的一员，我会数着日子等待搬进苹果公园里。