Dubai firm supplies record-breaking roof for Apple’s $5bn campus

The roof is the “most stunning addition to the building”, Dubai Investment Park-based Premier Composite Technologies, states on its website.

The circular roof, weighing 80 tonnes, is made up of 44 identical radial panels, averaging 70 feet long and 11 feet wide, with each panel connected to a small central hub positioned in the middle.

These panels, which were assembled and tested in locally, were shipped in pieces to Cupertino, California.

The mega campus, which covers 175 acres and is nearing completion, is one of the last projects envisioned by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011.

Jobs laid out his vision for a futuristic circular house of glass before the Cupertino City Council that would foster creativity and collaboration few months before his death. The council approved his plans two years later.

On Tuesday, the New York Times quoted Savita Vaidhyanathan, Cupertino’s Mayor, as saying, “I saw the underground 1,000-seat theatre and the carbon-fibre roof. The roof was made in Dubai, and it was transported and assembled here. I love that it’s here and that I can brag about it.”

In Apple’s 2017 Environmental Responsibility Report, Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, who reports directly to CEO Tim Cook, called the new HQ as the “greenest corporate headquarters on the planet”.

Apple Park in Cupertino is on track to be the largest LEED Platinum certified office building in North America, she said.

The Apple Park is powered by 100 percent renewable energy, 75 percent of which is generated onsite by a 17-megawatt rooftop solar installation and 4 megawatts of baseload biogas fuel cells. Over 80 percent of the new campus is open space with more than 9000 drought-tolerant trees. The campus also uses 75 percent recycled non-potable water to care for its dense forest and to run other onsite facilities where fresh water isn’t required, the report said.