Store Rendering Revealed–Another Glass Box

The design mirrors the architecture proposed in March to city of Portland (Ore.) officials for a new downtown Apple store, and also plans for a store in city center Aix en Provence (France). The California rendering was just obtained by Palo Alto Online from permit documents submitted by Apple’s architects, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. The drawing shows the store consists of two distinct spaces, separated by a stone wall. The front space consists of tall and wide glass panels creating an enclosed area that sits in front of the existing retail building, and occupying part of what is now a public plaza. At the rear of this space is a stone wall with product display counters and back-lit graphics. At the left and right end of the rear wall are openings that lead to the larger, rear retail space. The rendering doesn’t provide a view of the rear space, but it may include stone walls, a skylight and the usual product display tables and counters. The new store will replace a mini-store that opened about 700 feet away in October 2004, and which has been overshadowed by a large Microsoft store that opened one door away just last month. According to various sources, the store will open by year’s end.





This rendering of the Stanford replacement store shows glass enclosing the front retail space, with a light-colored roof overhead. A stone wall is at the rear of this space. At the far right of the front space you can see an opening that leads to the rear retail space, behind the front wall. Presumably there is another opening at the far end of the wall that also leads to the rear space.