Stickers used to deter accidents with Apple Park’s glass walls

The problem with employees walking into Apple Park’s glass walls may have been solved back in January with the help of black stickers applied to the wall to warn people — a solution also used at some Apple retail stores, according to a San Francisco Chronicle exclusive report.

The newspaper recently obtained the transcripts of 911 calls about at least three people who suffered head injuries after walking into the glass walls right when employees began moving into the spaceship, “including a middle-aged man who hit his head so hard against a glass window that he was bleeding on this eyebrow and expected to have stitches.”

Cupertino building official Albert Salvador told the Chronicle, “When you clean the windows, you can’t even tell some of them are there.”

Even before employees began moving into the building in January, Salvador and an official with the Santa Clara County Fire Department expressed concern about the problem, prompting architectural firm Foster + Partners to place “black rectangular stickers with rounded corners on the glass panes” in the cafeteria, the Chronicle reported.

That apparently wasn’t enough. After employees began to move into Apple Park on Jan. 2, “accidents began the first day, with two men suffering head injuries, followed by a third on Jan. 4,” according to the Chronicle.

After that, Foster + Partners and Apple applied stickers on other parts of the building, not just the cafeteria, and they were “effective in preventing people from running into glass,” Salvador said.

“After Jan. 4, there were no other incidents in which emergency services were called to treat people running into the glass,” the Chronicle said.

It is unclear whether there have been other incidents that did not require a 911 call.