Apple’s Retail Flagship’s Winter Weather Woes

Apple‘s Chicago flagship store in Chicago has often been praised as a marvel of design.  It even has a MacBook-shaped roof.

It does, however, have one small issue.

Its design might not be best suited for a city with a deep, cold, wet winter, and its thin roof may not be able to handle a lot of weight (like the kind that comes from, say, snow). Oh, and it is currently hanging a series of dangerously large sharp icicles over the streets below.

Oops. And those ice protrusions in fact looked so menacing they have forced the closure of the walkways underneath them, for fear that someone might be impaled.

According to local blogger Matt Maldre – the fancy building design, while seemingly in service of Apple’s new “town square” plan, seems to have forgotten what town it was actually being built for. “Maybe next time Apple will consider the actual community where their stores are built,” Maldre writes. “Y’know, basic things like in Chicago, the weather gets cold. It snows. The snow falls off the roof. Don’t design a slopping roof where the snow can’t be caught or guttered off somewhere.”