Apple to build additional “spaceship” campus in Sunnyvale, house up to 3,000 workers via new structure

It looks like Apple will be snapping up yet another spaceship campus, this time in Sunnyvale.

Word on the ground is that Apple has sealed a deal for Landbank Investments LLC’s planned Central & Wolfe campus. The headquarters will be a curvaceous, 777,000-square-foot project at Central Expressway and Wolfe Road that’s expected to look like nothing else ever attempted in Silicon Valley. The current marketing web address has been designated as “Notanotherbox.com”.

The campus will be brokered by Landbank Investments and designed by architecture firm HOK and will consist of three, four-story buildings over two levels of parking connected by an undulating skin. The effect is a cloverleaf, or flower-petal-like design that draws comparisons to Apple Campus 2 but is unique in its own right.

Thad been reported that Apple and the developer were in negotiations, but sources recently confirmed that deal has been completed. Terms of the deal couldn’t immediately be learned, but it’s believed that Apple has leased, not purchased, the project. It’s unknown when it could start construction.

The transaction serves as another sign of Apple’s tremendous expansion, potentially providing enough room for more than 3,000 workers. The 18-acre campus, approved last year, is slated to transform a collection of nine buildings erected in the 1960s and ’70s — the golden age of Silicon Valley’s tilt-up construction era — into a striking structure that defies easy description. Indeed, the project seems perhaps a perfect fit for Apple, recalling some of the curvy design cues on its under-construction “spaceship” Apple Campus 2, about five miles south.

The campus also promises to dramatically alter this part of Sunnyvale, a neighborhood dominated by single-story industrial and R&D buildings. While Apple has been snapping up existing buildings all over the neighborhood, the massive new campus could become a new icon for the region.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via the Silicon Valley Business Journal, @louisgray and @techmeme