Apple's New Spaceship

Apple plans to build a new campus with a circular building that looks a spaceship, big enough to house 12,000 employees. The campus, near Apple's existing headquarters in Cupertino, California, will generate its own energy.

The company has 12,000 employees in the Cupertino area, in its headquarters at Infinite Loop and in other buildings, Jobs said. It plans to retain its existing headquarters building, but needs new office space to accommodate employees, he said.

The new office building will be of "human scale" size, about four stories high, Jobs said. About 12,000 employees in one building "sounds rather odd," Jobs said, but said that the campus is necessary to keep up the company's pace of growth.

Apple plans to build an energy center that will generate primary power for the new campus, and the company will rely on the grid for backup power. That will help the company use power from natural gas and other cheaper and cleaner forms of energy.

A lot of the current land on the campus is asphalt parking space, and the new campus will be greener, Jobs said. The company wants to landscape 80 percent of the new campus, up from 20 percent, and put most of the parking underground.

"The word spectacular would be an understatement. I think that everybody's going to appreciate what clearly is going to be the most elegant headquarters at least in the U.S. that I've seen," said a council member and former HP employee, Orrin Mahoney, after Jobs' presentation.