The Denny Triangle section of downtown Seattle is one of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhoods, spearheaded by Amazon’s sprawling new corporate headquarters. When complete, three new towers will be complemented by three distinctive biospheres, which are intended to give the campus an organic and futuristic flair. When construction of the biospheres is completed in 2018, employees will be able to traverse suspension bridges and be surrounded by more than 40,000 plants. Bloomberg reports that the glass domes -- the largest will be 90 feet (27.4 m) tall -- will have “meeting spaces resembling bird nests perched in mature trees.” The climate in the biodomes will be kept at a pleasant 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22.2 degrees Celsius) with 60 percent humidity during the day. At night, the environment will become more plant-friendly, set at 55 degrees Fahrenheit (12.8 degrees Celsius) with 85 percent humidity.
Corporations at one with nature:
- The three intersecting spheres will give the company’s employees 65,000 square feet (6,039 sq m) of green space in which to walk, talk, lounge, eat lunch, conduct meetings, and brainstorm.
- Amazon’s ambitious architecture project will give the e-commerce giant 10 million square feet (929,030 sq m) of office space in Seattle.
- California's tech firms also seem to love plants. Airbnb put a wall of greenery in its San Francisco headquarters, while Apple is planning to create a forest of 8,000 trees at its new campus in Cupertino.