The Bell Labs campus in New Jersey, taken in 1949 (Credit: AT&T Archives and History Center)
My God… It’s heaven.
This was the thought Mae Holland had on her first tour of The Circle’s campus. The landscaping, exercise classes, cafeteria and entertainers had Mae’s head spinning. Compared to the grey cubicle of her previous workplace, the campus was idyllic.
Mae’s workplace in Dave Eggers’s bestselling novel The Circle sounds remarkably similar to Apple’s new “spaceship” campus, also shaped in a giant circle.
The modern corporate campus is the continuation of something that started more than 50 years ago
The corporate campus might have taken its time to work into popular fiction but the idea of getting all your employees together in one giant university-style space is the continuation of something that started more than 50 years ago.