Walking into Glass Walls

Markozen.com Buildings

By Adam Killick

And now it’s time for another edition of our occasional, semi-regular, periodically occurring segment, “seems like a bad idea….”

If there is one thing that Apple fans and critics can likely agree on, it’s that the company’s products have really good design. Apple’s designers really know how to make metal and glass look pretty.

So it was only fitting that when the company built its new headquarters, the architectural design matched the company’s industrial design ethic.

And that resulted in a spectacular building in Cupertino, California, dubbed the “spaceship.”

apple-s-new-hq

The ring-shaped building feature lots and lots of glass. Glass walls, glass floors, glass ceilings… you get the idea. And you can bet all that glass is kept sparking clean, so it looks all but invisible, as it was designed to.

Apple’s new “spaceship” campus in Silicon Valley (The Associated Press/Apple Inc.)

But there is one obvious — or perhaps not-so-obvious — issue with the design.

And that is that people have a habit of walking into things they can’t see.

A freedom-of-information request by the San Francisco Chronicle revealed that there have been quite a lot of 9-1-1 calls made from the Apple campus.

What is clear, if you pardon the pun, is that Apple was warned by building inspectors about the dangers of the glass design when the campus was being built. And the company has removed numerous Post-it notes placed by employees that showed where the doors were,

That’s because the designers apparently wanted nothing that might distract engineers and coders from thinking about their work. So those same distracted engineers and coders have been walking into the glass.

Which really seems like a bad idea.

Apple-spaceship_HQ_01

 

The Ignorant Do Crazy Things

Markozen.com Human condition

bbc

Lawsuit after Malaysian flag reported as ‘IS symbol’ in US

bbc

A US employee association is being sued after restricting a Muslim man’s membership over a row about a flag.

Munir Zanial let a property at a lake owned by the organisation for a Malaysian Independence Day party.

The FBI was alerted when an employee reported Muslim guests were displaying what was described as a US flag defaced with Islamic State group symbols.

The investigation ended when it emerged the flag was Malaysia’s, but Mr Zanial was banned from hosting events.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Kansas has now filed a law suit accusing the Spirit Boeing Employees Association of “racial profiling and blatant religious discrimination”.

‘Blatant discrimination’

Mr Zanial, a Muslim Malaysian aerospace engineer, was a paying member of the employee association when he rented the property to celebrate both Malaysian Independence Day and the end of Ramadan in September 2017.

According to the complaint, the party included guests of Indian-Malaysian ancestry with several women wearing hijabs.

The FBI closed its investigation the following month, but the law suit alleges that the employee association then hired a private investigator to look into the incident, and ended Mr Zanial’s rental privileges without informing him.

The executive director of the ACLU of Kansas said: “To label someone a terrorist due to their appearance and their celebration of their heritage is shameful, but to continue to use that mislabel as grounds for blatant discrimination – even after it had been discredited by the FBI – is downright reprehensible.”

The Spirit Boeing Employees Association has made no comment.