San Francisco Chronicle:
When Albert Salvador, Cupertino’s building official, visited Apple’s new spaceship building last year, he worried that people would walk into the cafeteria’s glass walls because they couldn’t distinguish them from the equally clear automatic doors.
After he brought up the issue, a contractor walked straight into the glass.
He would not be the last.
I really shouldn’t find this story as funny as I do. And it’s an entirely predictable problem.
Turns out Jony’s Glass Donut is about as practical as his glass Cube.
My crystal ball sees some etching in Apple’s future.
This is what happens when you design a building for architectural publications instead of the people that use it.
Foster + Partners should have anticipated this and developed an elegant solution.
Since Jan 4, I wonder if people are now just more aware of the potential for a crash or is Apple just not calling 911 anymore when a crash happens. Apple could be treating these types of injuries at their onsite clinic and not reporting them. I also wonder how many people were looking at their iPhone when they hit the glass.
In any case, something will have to change. ~13k people working there every day will yield some percentage of crashes.
I worked at a shopping mall long ago and watched a customer walk right into our front window one day at full stride. Within a few days we had stickers on that glass. So this is a common thing and has been for a long time so it’s kind of surprising it wasn’t addressed. Part of me though thinks calling 911 is a bit of an overreaction.
Three 911 calls. The transcripts (also on SFC) might be a societal statement of our times.
Hubris machine bites fancy pants design
maven
It sounds like at least one of the people had a concussion (or concussion symptoms), so calling 911 is the right move.
The concerns were raised, they were just ignored for aesthetics.