New Apple store, featuring a 10-metre finless glass facade, glass staircase, and Apple’s largest glass bridge.

Apple Qingdao is the 33rd Apple store located in mainland China, situated within the country’s largest MixC shopping centre. Apple holds significant lease investments with the nationwide chain, and Eckersley O’Callaghan has engineered the facade and structural glass elements of all their new retail stores.

For Apple Qingdao we have designed a 10-metre finless glass facade and a glass staircase supported by a glass fibre reinforced concrete wall. The outlet also houses the largest glass bridge of any Apple store in the world, spanning 14 metres.

The facade presented additional challenges when the corner glass panel chipped due to unexpected rigid impact during construction. We developed a ‘corner guard’ design to protect the corner glass with the sharp chamfered edge exposed.

Finite Element Analysis was used in our design of the bridge to ensure that the response factor was kept below the required value so that users would not feel any vibrations. Connected to the stairs, the bridge was also engineered to be fireproof.

We engineered our designs to the Standard of the People’s Republic of China design codes and in coordination with the Local Design Institutes.

Location
Qingdao, China

Client
Apple

Architect
IDA