Steve Jobs unveils the new Apple "Mothership" campus

It looks like a gigantic UFO just landed right onto a park 148 acres in size, with trees and grass a plenty. It's a new "mothership" to accompany The Mothership a few blocks away - Apple's current headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino. A common joke amongst Apple employees entering the current building of roughly 2800 people was returning to the "mothership." In the distant future, the mothership "joke" will become reality, as Steve Jobs demonstrated in a presentation to Cupertino City Council last night.

The campus addresses the needs of 12,000 Apple employees that are currently housed at other rented buildings outside of Apple's main campus. 98 acres of the property used to belong to HP's computer systems division, according to Jobs. 80% of the land will be green cover, up from the current 20% figure due to the amount of asphalt occupying the area. The amount of trees on the property will be pegged at 6000, up from the current figure of 3700.

The new building is a two level, four storey disc with two continuous rings of curved glass on each level. A courtyard sits in the middle. Instead of accommodating a majority of cars on the surface, a parking lot for the campus will be buried underground, in addition to a separate parking structure at the edge of the property. The four storey parking structure will be accompanied with a energy generating station that Apple plans to use as their primary energy source for the new campus, turning to the electricity grid as a backup. In keeping with the environmentally friendly initiatives in place for this campus, the energy generating station will use natural gas.

A video of Jobs presenting Apple's plan to Cupertino City Council is available below (via TUAW):