Apple Store Review Images

Exploration of the Apple and their products led to a deliberate decision to preserve the calm, museum-like spacious interior often exhibited in their stores. Here I created a model of my concept for a showcase of Apple product capabilities as exhibited by the creation and observation of those using the video, sound, and graphic editing features of apple products. At the second level you see this large creation space platform, observed by pods intruding into the space at the consecutive third and fourth levels. The third level pod is seating for a small cafe, and the fourth level pod is a comfortable lounge space.

I have noticed that Apple's logo is everywhere, but it is just stuck onto design elements. I wanted to integrate the apple into the form of the building, subtly, yet recognizably to the imaginative Apple user. Above you can begin to see how the apple as a void would encourage curiosity and interaction with the architecture itself. As the apple pushes out of its exterior shell, the interior receives light at these intersections (front and side of building, main entrance, and roof). The ideas of the architecture created for this specific product will be quite evident.

The entrance to the building is at the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth Streets. The visitor may enter up the ramp and directly into the apple space, or engage with the apple volume as it juts out over a small terraced outdoor space. One particularly engaging place is at the north edge of the terrace, where the second floor platform pulls back along the curve and the visitor is able to look up into the apple void from outside the building. The apple also emerges along the Copley Square elevation, so that one might walk under it if entering at the side Apple Answers Bar entrance. To engage the square, the Answers Bar area also allows the street to bleed in through a weather dependant sliding storefront entrance. Visitors would be attracted by a small snack bar with seating to wait for their turn at the Answers Bar. Along Dartmouth Street, passers-by would be encouraged to enter another side entrance at an apple "convenience shop" within the store that displays accessories and is monitored by an employee able to make sales. Floor material changes delineate the person's entrance into and out of the apple. New and top design products would be displayed here in the central space. From here the second floor creation space is visible, and shoppers can choose to take a curved stair directly into the space. The main stair, located along Dartmouth Street, is constantly shifting as it responds to the apple volume as it goes up in space. A large glass elevator provides a vertical experience along the apple volume and provides opportunities for more sales at the landings on each floor.

The performance platform is visible here within the central void. The red shape represents the peeling volume that provides both a backdrop for performances, and a projection surface for work created here. The dotted line represents the third floor above.

The peel volume is meant to hint at the conceptual idea of the space. It pulls away from the third floor and leaves a glass rail to represent a void. The peel then falls down through this creation space and into the Answers Bar area, where a slit provides and encourages the opportunity for those just getting service to look up at what might be projected onto its surface in the creative space above.

Two peeling structures and the curved stair convey movement and energy directed toward this central creation space on the second floor. Note the customers at the Answers Bar below.

The openings at the apple intersections with the exterior plane and roof will be large contributors to the experience of the space. Combined with the peeling balconies, which are the only definition of the volume edge, the intersecting openings will convey the delicate and ephemeral quality of the space.

The facade consists of smooth dimensional cut stone in reference to the strength and significance conveyed by other buildings on Copley square, but in a uniquely modern application. Curtainwall at the corner provides a view into the apple form from across the square, and convex curtainwall and glass delineates the emergence of the apple volume from the boundaries here established.