since then it has had over 57 million visitors, and it remains the only apple retail location open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
steve jobs opened the store in 2006 and personally welcomed the first customers to enter the cube. the area dedicated to apple’s ‘geniuses’ has also doubled, allowing the team to increase service capacity. a new ‘forum’ is home to free, daily today at apple programming. Internally, ‘apple fifth avenue’ has a higher ceiling that its original version with more natural light. Image © aaron hargreaves / foster + partners above is a back-lit, cloud-like ceiling made from curved fabric that combines artificial and natural light to match the real-time tones of sunlight throughout the day. the staircase features 43 cantilevered stair treads that support a floating cylinder of glass.
Visitors enter by descending the new mirror-polished, stainless steel spiral staircase, or by riding the dynamic circular elevator into the grand hall. Image © aaron hargreaves / foster + partners (also main image) designboom attended the apple fifth avenue media preview and toured the site alongside foster + partners’ senior executive partner and head of studio, stefan behling. at its center stands the cube flanked by 18 mirror-glass ‘skylenses’ and 62 skylights that bring natural light into the store below. the site’s distinctive, luminous glass box rises above a newly designed public plaza, lined with 28 trees bordered with linear fountains. the landmark store has been completely re-designed in collaboration with foster + partners, and is now nearly twice the size of the original version. The new store opens to public this Friday at 8AM.Apple’s famous ‘cube’ is set to re-open its doors on new york’s fifth avenue on september 20th. It’s also apparently the coolest during sunrise and sunset when it takes on a glowing effect. The sunlight, in turn, is used by eight full-sized trees divided in two rows on the east and west sides of the store, along with a long, live green wall to the east (near the AirPods, FWIW). It’s a cool combination, the sunlight streaming through the fogged portholes along with the lighting rings around them. As cool as the glass looked, it always felt like a disaster waiting to happen whenever it rained.Īs promised, the lighting system was employed to great effect. One attendee this morning confided to me that he nearly bit it walking down the steps the first time he visited the store. The steps now have a stainless steel covering - for safety purposes, one assumes. Most surprising, the signature spiral staircase is no longer purely glass. That extra space allows for a larger Genius Bar that stretches the length of the store and a special HomePod listening area sealed behind glass that brings to mind the once-popular world of hi-fi stereo stores.
APPLE FIFTH AVENUE FULL
Underground, the store occupies the full area of the plaza, as well. Natural lighting is the key to Apple’s remodeled Fifth Ave. The plaza surrounding the cube has changed a good deal to accommodate a new lighting system that leverages a combination of sunlight and the power of 500,000 LEDs. Now, however, Apple’s completely taken over the space. Until a few years back, it fittingly shared the square with the iconic FAO Schwarz. The colorful concealer wrap was, sadly, just temporary.īut then, why mess with what’s become a New York City landmark in its decade and a half of existence? The store is positioned in one of the most highly trafficked corners of the city, at the southeast corner of Central Park, directly across from the Plaza (and perhaps less attractively to some, two blocks north of a certain presidential tower). The cube itself appears largely unchanged, aside from a new shine. Apple pulled back the curtain as a handful of curious onlookers stood by on the sidewalk.
This morning, the company offered a sneak preview to select media, ourselves included. The big reveal coincides with the company’s latest releases, including new iPhones and an Apple Watch - an appropriately grandiose homecoming for new gear. After two years of work, the wrapper comes off the giant glass cube this week, as Apple’s Fifth Avenue flagship opens to the public this Friday.
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