1870s Olmstedian vision of the pastoral context alive and well in 2016
April 12, 2016 12:12 PM Subscribe
Take a peek inside the development of Apple's new spaceship headquarters, designed by Norman Foster, in this video from 2013. Here's a fly-by of the development from November 2015, and an update from early April 2016. That's nice, but why are America's most innovative companies still stuck designing workplaces set in 1950s suburbia? The ghost of Olmsted reaches beyond urban parks.
But few are aware that Apple’s monumental project is already outdated, mimicking a half-century of stagnant suburban corporate campuses that isolated themselves—by design—from the communities their products were supposed to impact.
I dunno. This doesn't look like isolation to me. I'm pretty sure that's a community Apple's products impact. Sure, they're going to plant a bunch of trees around it, but isn't that a good thing? More trees, more good, right? I kind of suspect most of the neighbors would much rather see trees than a big corporate edifice, no matter how UFOish it looks.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:34 PM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
I dunno. This doesn't look like isolation to me. I'm pretty sure that's a community Apple's products impact. Sure, they're going to plant a bunch of trees around it, but isn't that a good thing? More trees, more good, right? I kind of suspect most of the neighbors would much rather see trees than a big corporate edifice, no matter how UFOish it looks.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:34 PM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
From the Collectors Weekly article:
Like the expansive headquarters of many companies who fled dense downtowns, Apple’s new office falls into the architectural vein Mozingo dubs “pastoral capitalism,” after a landscaping trend made popular more than a century ago. In the mid-19th century, prominent figures like Frederick Law Olmsted promoted a specific vision of the natural environment adapted to modern life, beginning with urban parks and university campuses and eventually encompassing suburban residential neighborhoods.posted by filthy light thief at 12:35 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
“There was this whole academic discussion around what defined the picturesque, the beautiful, and the sublime,” Mozingo told me when we spoke recently. “Landscape gardener Andrew Jackson Downing had written extensively about it in American publications, but Olmsted went beyond that, and called his ideal park landscape ‘pastoral.’ He was well-read enough to understand that this combined elements of wild nature with agricultural nature.”
...
When World War II left Europe’s economy in ruins, American corporations grew exponentially, requiring a massive increase in management staff and office space to handle thousands of new employees. The largest company headquarters were typically housed in several older buildings, leading those flush with cash to start thinking about constructing new spaces tailored to their needs. Executives also knew their preferred workforce (white, educated, married men) was moving to the suburbs and increasingly preferred to drive rather than use public transit.
In response to these shifts, major corporations embraced the notion that suburban pastoral settings were beneficial to their workers and their business. “I was surprised how much corporate executives absorbed this Olmstedian vision of the pastoral context being conducive to clear thinking, decision making, happy employees, and so forth,” Mozingo says. “It’s amazing to me—it was repeated over and over again in their public statements, writings, and internal memos. By the 1950s, we had this idea that everyone could work and think better in the country, and the pastoral ideal became one of the primary justifications for moving these offices to the suburbs.”
praemunire I'm not totally convinced I agree with the connection being drawn, but it is clearly laid out in the linked Collectors Weekly article:
In response to these shifts, major corporations embraced the notion that suburban pastoral settings were beneficial to their workers and their business. “I was surprised how much corporate executives absorbed this Olmstedian vision of the pastoral context being conducive to clear thinking, decision making, happy employees, and so forth,” Mozingo says. “It’s amazing to me—it was repeated over and over again in their public statements, writings, and internal memos. By the 1950s, we had this idea that everyone could work and think better in the country, and the pastoral ideal became one of the primary justifications for moving these offices to the suburbs.”posted by Wretch729 at 12:36 PM on April 12, 2016
In short: Olmsted and others advocated for the "pastoral" park landscape, which got lumped with suburban company campus designs, and only fosters more suburban development.
Olmsted isn't "to blame," but it was his vision that got adopted by US companies post WWII.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:38 PM on April 12, 2016
Olmsted isn't "to blame," but it was his vision that got adopted by US companies post WWII.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:38 PM on April 12, 2016
Not quite true for Apple's new campus, but the 50s flight to the suburbs, while I'm sure that pastoral ideals entered into it, as did union suppression and attracting their desired workforce, had another key consideration -- it was cheap.
Not that a Saarinen building out in the suburbs was cheap, but it was a hell of a lot cheaper to plop one down fresh in some collected farmfields than it would have been to build in Midtown Manhattan. Cheaper land, cheaper realty taxes, cheaper to fit out, cheaper to fill with workers.
posted by Capt. Renault at 12:54 PM on April 12, 2016
Not that a Saarinen building out in the suburbs was cheap, but it was a hell of a lot cheaper to plop one down fresh in some collected farmfields than it would have been to build in Midtown Manhattan. Cheaper land, cheaper realty taxes, cheaper to fit out, cheaper to fill with workers.
posted by Capt. Renault at 12:54 PM on April 12, 2016
It wasn't that long ago when as a WorldCom employee I was excited to be moving into the new mega-building way out in Ashburn VA. It had it's own cafeteria! I had a window office! It had covered parking!
https://goo.gl/maps/uqtgPmkz7i32
They were one of the first/few in the area to be moving that far out from DC, and the thinking (as it was explained to us drones) was that the amount the company would make by leasing the nearby land would pay for the building costs. I think it "kind-of" worked out, in that what used to be acres and acres of farms and woods is now acres and acres of data centers. Also, the town* of Ashburn was pretty much created overnight.
I think one of the buildings was never done, and from I hear, the entire complex is now really run-down looking and in desperate need of an overhaul.
*What used to be pretty much nothing is now a gazillion mcmansions on 1/4 acre plots, townhouses, and shopping plazas, none of which are walkable.
posted by Mr. Big Business at 12:54 PM on April 12, 2016
https://goo.gl/maps/uqtgPmkz7i32
They were one of the first/few in the area to be moving that far out from DC, and the thinking (as it was explained to us drones) was that the amount the company would make by leasing the nearby land would pay for the building costs. I think it "kind-of" worked out, in that what used to be acres and acres of farms and woods is now acres and acres of data centers. Also, the town* of Ashburn was pretty much created overnight.
I think one of the buildings was never done, and from I hear, the entire complex is now really run-down looking and in desperate need of an overhaul.
*What used to be pretty much nothing is now a gazillion mcmansions on 1/4 acre plots, townhouses, and shopping plazas, none of which are walkable.
posted by Mr. Big Business at 12:54 PM on April 12, 2016
I notice a distinct lack of suicide nets.
posted by Sys Rq at 12:55 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Sys Rq at 12:55 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
I dunno. This doesn't look like isolation to me. I'm pretty sure that's a community Apple's products impact.
A birds' eye of, for example, a cluster of Robert Moses' projects in Manhattan would yield a similar visual and I don't think there's any question there as to the efficacy of malicious intent
posted by an animate objects at 12:57 PM on April 12, 2016
A birds' eye of, for example, a cluster of Robert Moses' projects in Manhattan would yield a similar visual and I don't think there's any question there as to the efficacy of malicious intent
posted by an animate objects at 12:57 PM on April 12, 2016
I read the article, but it seems like a pretty arbitrary connection to me--if the idea is just "nature is good for people to think in," that's not really something particularly new or specific to Olmsted (whose name I appear to be compulsively misspelling). You might just as well call it a Virgilian vision.
posted by praemunire at 12:57 PM on April 12, 2016
posted by praemunire at 12:57 PM on April 12, 2016
I'm sure I didn't give the article my full attention, but I'm struggling to imagine, if the guy thinks this new Apple campus is bad because it's out in the suburbs, what exactly did he expect them to do? Tear down several blocks of downtown San Francisco to build something more "innovative"?
posted by dnash at 1:01 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by dnash at 1:01 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
You know what would be super awesome & innovative? Build a bunch of single family victorian detached homes and have each department occupy one and then meetings would take place in the drawing room and all the employees would have to dress like Vickys and heh he he heh he he h heh heh hHELLO GUVNA
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:11 PM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:11 PM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]
I think the criticism is it is not a great usage of land in an area with high rents and auto reliance. If Apple had gone "back to the future," they could have jumpstarted a new downtown and maybe eased the housing crunch a teeeeeny bit.
I guess the Apple campus is cool as far as office parks go, but I think the best thing you can say about it is that at least it wasn't a greenfield development.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:13 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
I guess the Apple campus is cool as far as office parks go, but I think the best thing you can say about it is that at least it wasn't a greenfield development.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:13 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
A birds' eye of, for example, a cluster of Robert Moses' projects in Manhattan would yield a similar visual and I don't think there's any question there as to the efficacy of malicious intent
Are you suggesting malicious intent in the design and location of Apple's new campus? Otherwise, why invoke Moses here? Unless a company plops their buildings down in the middle of an empty Kansas prairie, pretty much every birds' eye view is going to look like that, which gets to the point of my disagreeing with the article, insomuch that it castigates Apple for somehow isolating its new HQ from the community when, in fact, it's landed right in the middle of the community.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:13 PM on April 12, 2016
Are you suggesting malicious intent in the design and location of Apple's new campus? Otherwise, why invoke Moses here? Unless a company plops their buildings down in the middle of an empty Kansas prairie, pretty much every birds' eye view is going to look like that, which gets to the point of my disagreeing with the article, insomuch that it castigates Apple for somehow isolating its new HQ from the community when, in fact, it's landed right in the middle of the community.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:13 PM on April 12, 2016
think the criticism is it is not a great usage of land in an area with high rents and auto reliance. If Apple had "gone back to the future," they could have jumpstarted a new downtown and maybe eased the housing crunch a teeeeeny bit.
Exactly. The end of the article cites some development that Louise Mozingo sees as being better than pastoral campuses:
Exactly. The end of the article cites some development that Louise Mozingo sees as being better than pastoral campuses:
“For instance, there’s a developer in Silicon Valley, Kilroy Realty, building a development called the Crossing/900, which is the new Box headquarters, and it’s going to be high-density and mixed-use near Caltrain, so everybody’s excited about that one.” Mozingo also sees potential in a future Facebook project, since they’ve purchased a large plot of land near a disused rail line. “It’s supposed to be mixed-use with explicit public space, and a farmer’s market, and there’s the potential to actually service this area with rail,” she says. “I’m skeptical but hopeful.”posted by filthy light thief at 1:18 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
why invoke Moses here?
Because as others are pointing out in greater detail than I, it's not about location as much as architectural intent. The apple headquarters are designed to isolate and exclude, to create private space off the street. The same isolation and exclusion was fundamental to the changes Moses introduced in Manhattan. It might be worth alluding to transportation relationships of cars vs. mass, in the same vein as the other transit thread active here on the blue.
Commercial mixed-public access multipurpose space near public transit is a good thing. Car-centric walled fortresses shrouded by a field of trees are not as good a thing, or worse.
posted by an animate objects at 1:24 PM on April 12, 2016
Because as others are pointing out in greater detail than I, it's not about location as much as architectural intent. The apple headquarters are designed to isolate and exclude, to create private space off the street. The same isolation and exclusion was fundamental to the changes Moses introduced in Manhattan. It might be worth alluding to transportation relationships of cars vs. mass, in the same vein as the other transit thread active here on the blue.
Commercial mixed-public access multipurpose space near public transit is a good thing. Car-centric walled fortresses shrouded by a field of trees are not as good a thing, or worse.
posted by an animate objects at 1:24 PM on April 12, 2016
Puts me in mind of those old L5 Society slide shows.
posted by lagomorphius at 1:27 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by lagomorphius at 1:27 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think the criticism is it is not a great usage of land in an area with high rents and auto reliance. If Apple had gone "back to the future," they could have jumpstarted a new downtown and maybe eased the housing crunch a teeeeeny bit.
Ok. Though I note the alternative concept in your link basically paves over the entire site, which I think could be argued as environmentally questionable. At least, it's not that different from already existing suburban sprawl.
posted by dnash at 1:34 PM on April 12, 2016
Ok. Though I note the alternative concept in your link basically paves over the entire site, which I think could be argued as environmentally questionable. At least, it's not that different from already existing suburban sprawl.
posted by dnash at 1:34 PM on April 12, 2016
Higher density urban development is the most environmentally sound development there is. And the environment won't benefit from the 10,000 cars that will be driving and parking there daily.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:41 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by entropicamericana at 1:41 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
There's a brand new Cupertino "downtown" being built like a mile south of the new Apple campus and it's mostly terrible but it's a minor improvement on the rest of the city in terms of density, mixed-use and walkability.
Google has a very huge office in NYC and it's cool and all but there are fairly few buildings in the world that big.
And also all of Apple's employees already live in Cupertino so it seems silly to suggest they build a new HQ somewhere else.
posted by GuyZero at 1:52 PM on April 12, 2016
Google has a very huge office in NYC and it's cool and all but there are fairly few buildings in the world that big.
And also all of Apple's employees already live in Cupertino so it seems silly to suggest they build a new HQ somewhere else.
posted by GuyZero at 1:52 PM on April 12, 2016
The Apple Campus 2 is located where it is because:
1. Apple
and
B. Cupertino
Any further protracted discussion on the matter is purely academic.
posted by humboldt32 at 1:58 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
1. Apple
and
B. Cupertino
Any further protracted discussion on the matter is purely academic.
posted by humboldt32 at 1:58 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Eventually we'll just go back to company towns with company stores and then the plutocrats will have what they've really wanted all this time.
(Lose your job? You've lost your house, too! You, your spouse, and your three children have thirty minutes to vacate the premises before we call the police, whom we also own.)
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:59 PM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]
(Lose your job? You've lost your house, too! You, your spouse, and your three children have thirty minutes to vacate the premises before we call the police, whom we also own.)
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:59 PM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]
Five thousand years from now historians will be puzzled over trying to figure out the strange UFO worshiping fruit cult that built a massive omphalos ostensibly as landing site, but they were even more surprised to find the utterly massive, hundreds of miles long underground confab filled with genetically engineered bio-drones still busily manufacturing shiny little glowing display screens.
posted by loquacious at 2:03 PM on April 12, 2016
posted by loquacious at 2:03 PM on April 12, 2016
I'm curious what the alternatives are. I mean, not in the obvious sense of "do the opposite", but has there been any new, modern architectural and organizational work done on how to do good, efficient large scale offices in cities? My interest is not entirely academic, since I'm currently invited to a possible office building project where a large urban building mass would be renovated and used for offices for several related companies.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:10 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:10 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
So these drone videos were shot on a Sunday morning over Apple's private property? Kind of thinking that's not really cool.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:12 PM on April 12, 2016
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:12 PM on April 12, 2016
I am mildly but genuinely perturbed by its similarity to The Doughnut.
One of these things really should not be like the other.
posted by Devonian at 2:18 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
One of these things really should not be like the other.
posted by Devonian at 2:18 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
has there been any new, modern architectural and organizational work done on how to do good, efficient large scale offices in cities?
Not sure if this quite fits what you're asking, and it's a pretty new thing but here in Chicago a 100-year old cold storage warehouse has recently been turned into an office development, with some 300,000 sq ft being leased to Google. The neighborhood is one of the former meat-packing, industrial type areas of the city, that's currently jam packed with some of the trendiest, most talked-about restaurants in the country.
posted by dnash at 2:23 PM on April 12, 2016
Not sure if this quite fits what you're asking, and it's a pretty new thing but here in Chicago a 100-year old cold storage warehouse has recently been turned into an office development, with some 300,000 sq ft being leased to Google. The neighborhood is one of the former meat-packing, industrial type areas of the city, that's currently jam packed with some of the trendiest, most talked-about restaurants in the country.
posted by dnash at 2:23 PM on April 12, 2016
Moving Apple to SF would be insane, and would negatively impact probably most employees.
I suppose they could have moved to San Jose, wouldn't be very far and its a pretty big city.
But.... the article talked about "suburban pastoral settings". The Peninsula is not "pastoral" by any stretch. Compared to the East Coast suburbs I grew up in, it feels closer to a city. There are buses. There is (not very good, but existant) rail service. There really isn't much open space. It's low density, but mostly because it doesn't go "up" much.
I guess growing up in the suburban South set my expectations, but the "suburbia" of the Peninsula felt radically different from any conception of suburbs I had (the neighborhood I grew up in, you had to go 1 mile from our house just to EXIT THE SUBDIVISION. And there were no buses, no sidewalks, no retail within a couple miles. Just 30 minutes out from downtown Atlanta).
posted by thefoxgod at 3:10 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
I suppose they could have moved to San Jose, wouldn't be very far and its a pretty big city.
But.... the article talked about "suburban pastoral settings". The Peninsula is not "pastoral" by any stretch. Compared to the East Coast suburbs I grew up in, it feels closer to a city. There are buses. There is (not very good, but existant) rail service. There really isn't much open space. It's low density, but mostly because it doesn't go "up" much.
I guess growing up in the suburban South set my expectations, but the "suburbia" of the Peninsula felt radically different from any conception of suburbs I had (the neighborhood I grew up in, you had to go 1 mile from our house just to EXIT THE SUBDIVISION. And there were no buses, no sidewalks, no retail within a couple miles. Just 30 minutes out from downtown Atlanta).
posted by thefoxgod at 3:10 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'm curious what the alternatives are.
Well, Elon Musk has the lease on the hollow volcano, but the least they could do is go for some isolated atoll or underwater complex. That way when we need to get rid of them, we could just send in a single secret agent, then a bunch of cruise missiles.
Now? You can't even walk three blocks in Cupertino without tripping over an Apple facility. "Isolated" my foot.
posted by happyroach at 3:59 PM on April 12, 2016
Well, Elon Musk has the lease on the hollow volcano, but the least they could do is go for some isolated atoll or underwater complex. That way when we need to get rid of them, we could just send in a single secret agent, then a bunch of cruise missiles.
Now? You can't even walk three blocks in Cupertino without tripping over an Apple facility. "Isolated" my foot.
posted by happyroach at 3:59 PM on April 12, 2016
San Jose is mostly indistinguishable from Cupertino so not sure what difference it would make. There's like a square mile of high density urban core in San Jose.
posted by GuyZero at 4:12 PM on April 12, 2016
posted by GuyZero at 4:12 PM on April 12, 2016
You can't even walk three blocks in Cupertino without tripping over an Apple facility
Like anyone has ever walked 3 blocks in Cupertino.
posted by GuyZero at 4:13 PM on April 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
Like anyone has ever walked 3 blocks in Cupertino.
posted by GuyZero at 4:13 PM on April 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
So these drone videos were shot on a Sunday morning over Apple's private property? Kind of thinking that's not really cool.
Apple routinely does aerial surveying, so at worst this is taking advantage of the same rules that Apple does.
posted by reventlov at 4:18 PM on April 12, 2016
Apple routinely does aerial surveying, so at worst this is taking advantage of the same rules that Apple does.
posted by reventlov at 4:18 PM on April 12, 2016
Not quite true for Apple's new campus, but the 50s flight to the suburbs, while I'm sure that pastoral ideals entered into it, as did union suppression and attracting their desired workforce, had another key consideration -- it was cheap.
Well it was cheap when Helwltt-Packard originally built its campus there. I grew up half a mile from it, and there were still tiny remnant orchards, including one at the end of my block, and one right by HP.
But.... the article talked about "suburban pastoral settings". The Peninsula is not "pastoral" by any stretch.
The article is talking about the specific landscape of the campuses. Ever been to Sandhill road? It's built up more since I was a kid, but the corporations there are low slung, surrounded by green lawns and trees. When Xerox PARC and Hewlett-Packard (where my dad worked) located there the only possible way to get to them was pretty much by car. They were green and leafy places among rolling hills, totally inaccessible to anyone who relied on public transit. The public transit on the Peninsula is vastly improved just in the last twenty years, but there's moratoriums on housing in order to preserve the "culture", making most the tech campuses as walled off as they were half a century ago. Are people really going to leave Apple to take a walk down Wolfe road or ride the bus somewhere for lunch?
posted by oneirodynia at 4:47 PM on April 12, 2016
Well it was cheap when Helwltt-Packard originally built its campus there. I grew up half a mile from it, and there were still tiny remnant orchards, including one at the end of my block, and one right by HP.
But.... the article talked about "suburban pastoral settings". The Peninsula is not "pastoral" by any stretch.
The article is talking about the specific landscape of the campuses. Ever been to Sandhill road? It's built up more since I was a kid, but the corporations there are low slung, surrounded by green lawns and trees. When Xerox PARC and Hewlett-Packard (where my dad worked) located there the only possible way to get to them was pretty much by car. They were green and leafy places among rolling hills, totally inaccessible to anyone who relied on public transit. The public transit on the Peninsula is vastly improved just in the last twenty years, but there's moratoriums on housing in order to preserve the "culture", making most the tech campuses as walled off as they were half a century ago. Are people really going to leave Apple to take a walk down Wolfe road or ride the bus somewhere for lunch?
posted by oneirodynia at 4:47 PM on April 12, 2016
In our dystopian future having a large expanse of farmland safe within our city’s walls is a good thing.
posted by D.C. at 4:58 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by D.C. at 4:58 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
I came here hoping to hear that Apple had joined the commercial space race, and was going all-in on interplanetary transportation. Sadly, it turned out to just be a fancy new office building.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:25 PM on April 12, 2016
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:25 PM on April 12, 2016
Some unicorn should pay Elon to rocket Eero Saarinens' abandoned Bell Labs HQ onto an autonomous culture-barge in the Bay.
posted by creade at 8:50 PM on April 12, 2016
posted by creade at 8:50 PM on April 12, 2016
I agree that Apple should've built a high-rise instead of a curvier Pentagon. But (a) I doubt Cupertino government would've approved that plan, because the “suburban” towns of the peninsula want all the jobs but none of the associated density; (b) if you build a high-rise, you either need good public transit [which Cupertino doesn't have] or an adjacent high-rise parking garage [which is ugly]; (c) if they had moved their offices to the nearest town that would've let them build something that urban, it would've been highly disruptive to the existing employees who live near the office.
The article makes it sound like companies themselves could reverse this trend with a snap of the fingers. But suburbs want suburban-looking developments, and the fact that they don't allow anything else is part of why the nearby urban areas are so expensive to inhabit. The problem is not just the banality of corporations; it's public policy, and it can be changed if enough people care to change it.
posted by savetheclocktower at 10:00 AM on April 13, 2016
The article makes it sound like companies themselves could reverse this trend with a snap of the fingers. But suburbs want suburban-looking developments, and the fact that they don't allow anything else is part of why the nearby urban areas are so expensive to inhabit. The problem is not just the banality of corporations; it's public policy, and it can be changed if enough people care to change it.
posted by savetheclocktower at 10:00 AM on April 13, 2016
Really? You don't think Cupertino's government would have bent over backward to make the world's largest company happy and keep them in their city limits? I'm sure the NIMBYs would have squawked, but man, Cupertino is as close to a company town as anything in 2016.
I agree with you though: It's not just the banality of corporations, it is public policy, and it can be changed if enough people (and corporations) care to change it.
posted by entropicamericana at 10:31 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
I agree with you though: It's not just the banality of corporations, it is public policy, and it can be changed if enough people (and corporations) care to change it.
posted by entropicamericana at 10:31 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've had the opportunity to work in the Deere and Company headquarters pictured in the article several times. It is a midcentury architectural jewel, and I would encourage anybody driving through the Quad Cities on Interstate 80 to stop in and see the public atrium.
It's somewhat ironic that it appears in this article, considering that Deere's board of directors tried to pressure the CEO into moving headquarters from the Midwest to New York City shortly before the site was selected. If a rural, pastoral setting isn't appropriate for an agricultural equipment manufacturer, then what is? Certainly not New York City.
posted by TrialByMedia at 1:41 PM on April 13, 2016
It's somewhat ironic that it appears in this article, considering that Deere's board of directors tried to pressure the CEO into moving headquarters from the Midwest to New York City shortly before the site was selected. If a rural, pastoral setting isn't appropriate for an agricultural equipment manufacturer, then what is? Certainly not New York City.
posted by TrialByMedia at 1:41 PM on April 13, 2016
In our dystopian future having a large expanse of farmland safe within our city’s walls is a good thing.
*Calculates acres needed to feed 13,000 employees*
Nope, not enough. Upper management is going to have to cannibalize the contract workers. I mean, they'll have to start physically cannibalizing them.
posted by happyroach at 1:59 PM on April 13, 2016
*Calculates acres needed to feed 13,000 employees*
Nope, not enough. Upper management is going to have to cannibalize the contract workers. I mean, they'll have to start physically cannibalizing them.
posted by happyroach at 1:59 PM on April 13, 2016
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posted by praemunire at 12:22 PM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]