Amazon Spheres Headquarters
Introduction
The Amazon Spheres are three spherical greenhouses that contain part of Amazon's headquarters in Seattle, Washington, United States. Designed by architecture studio NBBJ and landscaping studio Site Workshop, its three glass spheres are covered with pentagonal panels that form three pentagonal hexecontahedrons and serve as an employee lounge and workspace. The spheres, which are three to four stories high, house forty thousand plants, as well as meeting spaces and shops. They are located next to the Day 1&action=edit&redlink=1 "Day 1 (building) (not yet redacted)" building on Lenora Street. The complex opened to Amazon employees and, with limitations, the public on January 30, 2018.[1][2] The spheres are primarily reserved for Amazon employees, but are open to the public through weekly tours of the company's headquarters and a ground-floor exhibit.[3].
Design
The spheres are located along Lenora Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, beneath the Day 1 building on Amazon's Seattle campus.[3] The three intersecting spherical domes range from 80 to 90 feet tall and occupy half a city block. In its construction, more than 560 tons of steel and 2,600 glass panels were used, arranged as pentagons that form a pentagonal hexecontahedron.[4][5].
The largest sphere, the central one, is four stories high and 300 m² in area; It houses the cafeteria, the staircase, elevators and toilets. The stairwell is covered by a four-story high growing wall with twenty-five thousand plants, including carnivorous species from Asia.[1][6] The spheres have meeting spaces, tables and benches with capacity for a total of eight hundred people.[1].
The complex, nicknamed "Bezos' Balls" by the media, has become a recognizable landmark and tourist attraction in the Denny Triangle area since construction began.[7] The structure has been compared to the iconic Space Needle, built in the city as a futuristic monument for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition.[6] The design of the spheres shows influences from biophilic design, incorporating nature into the environment. built.[8].
Flora
The spheres have forty thousand plants from fifty different countries, divided into three zones, with the western and eastern domes dedicated to the Old World and the New World, respectively.[1][2][9] Their interior space is maintained at a temperature of 22°C and humidity of 60% during the day.[1] Amazon hired a full-time horticulturist to grow the building's forty thousand plants over a three-year period in a greenhouse located in Redmond. "Redmond (Washington)").[10] Amazon donated part of this greenhouse space to the University of Washington botany program during the renovation of its life sciences building in 2016.[11] Among the forty to fifty trees containing the spheres,[12] the largest is a 17 m tall nicknamed "Ruby", which was placed on the spheres by a crane in June 2017.[13].