An artist rendering of the circular building Apple would like to build on its new campus in Cupertino, Calif.

Apple is bursting at the seams with employees, and CEO Steve Jobs wants to build a new corporate campus in Cupertino, Calif., that will be dominated by a single "spaceship"-like building.

Jobs went before the Cupertino City Council this evening (see video of the meeting below) to try to win approval for development of a campus that will augment--not replace--its current campus at Infinite Loop Drive. Jobs said the current campus holds about 2,800 employees, but the company has 12,000 employees in the area.

"Apple is growing like a weed," Jobs told the City Council. "It's clear we need to build a new campus."

Apple bought property across town formerly owned by Hewlett-Packard where it would like to construct a circular building that will hold 12,000 people, Jobs said.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs addressing the Cupertino, Calif., City Council on Tuesday.

"Think about that, that's rather odd, 12,000 people in one building," Jobs told the council. "We've seen these office parks with lots of buildings--and they get pretty boring pretty fast. So we'd like to do something better than that."

"It's a bit like a spaceship landed," Jobs said of the four-story building's design while showing the council artist renderings.

"There's not a straight piece of glass in this building' it's all curved," he said, citing the company's experience creating innovative Apple Stores around the world. "We know how to build the biggest pieces of glass for architectural use."

Apple's design calls for the campus to be 80 percent landscape with 6,000 trees, with most of the vehicle parking under ground, Jobs said. It would have an on-campus energy center that would be its primary source of power, using the power grid as a backup. It will have an auditorium for presentations and an R&D center.

Jobs said the site is currently 20 percent landscape checkered with parking lots. Landscape would increase 350 percent, visible parking would decrease by 90 percent, and building footprint would decrease by 30 percent, he said.

In 2010, Apple purchased the 98-acre parcel of land on Pruneridge Avenue, adjacent to 50 acres the company purchased in 2006. Apple did not reveal the selling price, but real estate experts estimate it may have been $300 million or more, according to an AllThingsD report.

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Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven.