Employees at Apple’s Spaceship Office Keep Running Into Glass Walls

These days, it’s not enough to have your corporate office be a run-of-the-mill, plain-Jane building.

Companies of all sizes are putting serious thought into their corporate spaces to make them not just aesthetically appealing, but also flexible, comfortable and productivity-enhancing. As it turns out though, sometimes aesthetically appealing office spaces don’t always make for the most comfortable ones.

Take it from Apple, whose brand new spaceship-like headquarters have one very serious design flaw, despite being dubbed an “architectural marvel.”

According to Bloomberg, Apple’s new headquarters building is designed to house some 13,000 employees. Wired magazine, which was the first to pay a visit at its opening last year, described the structure as a “statement of openness, of free movement.”

“While it is a technical marvel to make glass at this scale, that’s not the achievement,” Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design chief, told the magazine in May. “The achievement is to make a building where so many people can connect and collaborate and walk and talk.”

As It turns out, walking and talking at Apple’s new headquarters is easier said than done because Apple employees keep running into the spotless glass walls that adorn every room, pod and door at the spaceship.

While it’s admittedly humorous to picture Apple employees running into walls while trying to get to the bathroom or their desk, the legal risks are nothing to laugh about. And it’s not the first time the glass-wall aesthetic has gotten the company in hot water. For example, back in 2011, an 83-year-old woman walked into the glass wall of an Apple store and ended up with a broken nose. The woman sued Apple, but was later settled without any cost to the company, according to Bloomberg.

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