Apple’s plans for a massive spaceship-like headquarters campus have been unanimously approved by the Cupertino city council and the company will start construction work before the year’s end, the San Jose Mercury News reported on Wednesday.
The plan, which was developed by company founder Steve Jobs before his death two years ago, has been criticised by some for closing off the Apple campus inside a huge four-storey ring, and for adding to the area’s traffic problems.
But those drawbacks did not deter the council from giving the project its approval at a packed meeting on Tuesday night.
The $ 5 billion building, which is close to Apple’s current headquarters in the city, is designed to hold 14,200 workers in more than 260,000 square metres of space.
Together with its ancillary buildings and parking structures the development will be almost as large as the Pentagon. It is designed by British architect Norman Foster.