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One hundred years ago the ultimate symbols of corporate power wore varying styles of masonry. But they had one thing in common: height. But is this glass circle really visionary architecture or just the familiar suburban office park writ large and rendered in exquisite materials? That hotel and its vertigo-inducing internal courtyard were the brainchild of John Portman, a neo-futuristic architect and developer who envisioned soaring atria, hanging gardens, sky bridges, external glass elevators—an alternate city inside the real one.

His buildings were controversial then and now, but always mindblowers. They inspired debate, and they certainly looked the way we dreamed the future would. Foster is known to be interested in space colonization his firm has unveiled plans for a 3-D-printed Mars settlement , and Jobs was definitely an alien. Apple Park has already been nicknamed the Spaceship.

But is it the future? Will it be a building students study 50 years from now? Apple Park does have one thing going for it, though: a steady stream of cash.

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The usual patrons of architecture on this scale are governments, which may have the money initially but over the years invariably run out of funds to keep their utopias sparkling. To retain its power to inspire, modernism—especially glass modernism—needs to be kept pristine. Very few modern buildings, save those designed by Louis Kahn or Rafael Moneo, will look good as ruins and nobody really knows what the life span of glass curtain wall construction is.

Apple, with the resources of a sovereign nation, can and undoubtedly will do for its Park what Brasilia, Gbadolite, and Empire State Plaza could not: fund its maintenance in immaculate perpetuity. And of all the statistics attached to this building, those may be the most important. Inside Mar-a-Lago.