Walking up 72nd Street and Central Park West in New York’s Manhattan, I’ve always been impressed by the Dakota, built in 1884, where the figure of a Dakota Indian keeps watch. Its high gables, deep roofs, profusion of dormers, terracotta panels, niches and balconies give it a German Renaissance character, yet it’s influenced by French architectural trends. Rich and famous artists have lived here?composer Leonard Bernstein, actors Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Boris Karloff, Robert Ryan, singer Roberta Flack, playwright William Inge and dancer Rudolf Nureyev, among others.
But best known as the home of Beatle John Lennon from 1973, Dakota is also the location of Lennon’s murder by Mark David Chapman on December 8, 1980. Yoko Ono laid out the Strawberry Fields memorial in her husband’s memory in Central Park directly across here. It’s now a public pilgrimage place with ?Imagine? written in a beautiful round floor mural. Lennon used to frequent here with his second son Sean, and his fans now come, often with guitars, to place flowers for him and sing his songs.
Extending along Central Park South is the landmark 20-storey luxury Plaza Hotel overlooking 5th Avenue, built by the same architectural firm of Henry Janeway Hardenbergh which designed Dakota. It cost $12.5 million to construct at the turn of the century, Donald Trump paid $407.5 million in 1988 and Manhattan developer El Ad Properties spent $675 million to buy it in 2004. This hotel has been the setting of several films, including Barefoot in the Park, Scent of a Woman, Home Alone 2 and Eloise at the Plaza.
Apart from stories of these two centuries-old buildings full of artistic and entertainment memorabilia, nothing had attracted me to this high-rise concrete jungle. But now a new philosophical landmark has emerged at this corner of 5th Avenue and 59th Street.
It is Steve Job’s imaginative idea of a bitten Apple that’s become a magnet for visitors of all age groups.
When mainframe manufacturer IBM was ruling the computing roost from 1936, the colorful, mysterious Apple computer suddenly appeared in 1976 to invite consumers to bite into individual small computers. The name Apple was discomfiting as it subliminally conjured up the Catholic religion’s forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve bit into to discover pleasure in the prohibited Garden of Eden. Apple reflected scientific discovery too, as Newton had sat under an apple tree and proved the theory of gravitation. The Beatles had called their record company Apple, and New York is known as the Big Apple. All these other apple associations may have become history in front of this new Apple store with a glass cube housing a cylindrical glass elevator and a spiral glass staircase that leads to the underground store.
Just as the Louvre Museum in Paris now has a glass architecture pyramid highlighting its ancient treasures, this historical part of New York also had a glass cubicle that raises your curiosity from a distance when you spot the bitten Apple. Drawn closer, you discover an incredible techy bunker full of Apple electronics under the road. Every moment it’s open, this huge basement store stays incredibly busy, from eight-year-olds to 80-year-olds demanding the attention of sales assistants in blue T shirts. They seem to be from all classes of society, a very BCBG woman sporting a Louis Vuitton bag being trained on the iPad on the demo table, to young students selecting their iPods and techie geeks trying out different computers and accessories.
You become quite crazy in this fabulously designed shop where every item looks precious. In a totally commoditised market of electronics and computers, Apple is exposing tech art here, and people are enjoying the high tech experience here. The difference between exiting the Louvre’s glass pyramid and emerging from the glass structure of the Apple store is that instead of just buying a souvenir in the Paris museum, you come out of the 5th Avenue Apple store carrying happening products from a 21st century museum.
Steve Jobs undoubtedly imagined that a 21st century category product invention has to be introduced by creating a cultural phenomenon. He did this through a store that allows all kinds of consumers, from the rich to the poor, to experience tomorrow. A few years ago he had surprised everyone by taking over Manhattan’s Soho post office to open an Apple retailing store that looked like an art gallery, and had a large glass staircase where no joint could be seen. Soho is New York’s sophisticated art district with plenty of art galleries, although many of the smaller ones have since moved uptown to Chelsea as the area is getting too expensive.
Coming out from the basement Apple store, I wanted to think with a cup of tea. What better place than the renovated Plaza Hotel. A young Indian waiter there mentioned that recession has hit Landmark Hotel, so they worked out a new strategy of transforming 800 rooms into residential condominiums, and leaving just 200 rooms for hotel occupancy. These private apartments have been sold for as much as $50 million each.
Steve Jobs was highly criticised a few years ago when Apple plummeted into the red. But he believed that Apple is more universal than a technology product. With the iPod, he sprang back up the bottomline, re-establishing the Apple way of thinking for an entire generation across the world. Then, on introducing the iPad, he had young people queue up in all continents, and sold millions of pieces on the first week itself.
This just goes to show that a man’s creativity can change the world. You can argue whether he is a genius who thinks beyond his time or he just has good luck, but you cannot ignore how differently he thought in the commoditised category.
Set amidst fountains in an open sitting place overlooking historic Plaza in the world’s most advanced city, Apple has conjured up totally new thinking by plonking itself in a well established, open space. I can imagine that 5th Avenue can one day have its name changed to Apple Avenue. This may be the inner dream of Steve Jobs. His sustaining high value business is not only about making shareholders happy with money; it’s also about enriching different generations to experience technology and think differently by owning or touching an Apple from Steve’s thinking tree.
?Shombit Sengupta is an international Creative Business Strategy consultant to top managements. Reach http://www.shiningconsulting.com