Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Gobbles Downtown Seattle, Builds Biospheres (bloomberg.com)
Amazon has grabbed more than 15% of Seattle's office space inventory, which a local book author is describing as "the Amazocalypse". And now Amazon is building three "gigantic spheres resembling melted-together Milk Duds in the shadow of their new 500-foot-tall office tower," according to Bloomberg:
The 100-foot-tall orbs -- Amazon calls them Biospheres -- will host more than 300 plant species from around the world, creating what the company sees as the workplace of the future. Amazonians will be able to break from their daily labors to walk amid the greenery along suspension bridges and climb into meeting spaces resembling bird nests perched in mature trees... Many of the plants are endangered species, meaning that the spheres double as a conservation project.
Bloomberg talks about the desire of Amazon and other tech companies to stay -- and grow -- in the popular cities "where millennials prefer to live". While the owners of Seattle's Space Needle complain that all the new office towers are blocking views of their tourist attraction, the article also describes how Amazon leased the ground floors of its office buildings to "hand-picked bars, restaurants and coffee shops," transforming it from "a hodgepodge of car dealerships and second-hand stores."
Bloomberg talks about the desire of Amazon and other tech companies to stay -- and grow -- in the popular cities "where millennials prefer to live". While the owners of Seattle's Space Needle complain that all the new office towers are blocking views of their tourist attraction, the article also describes how Amazon leased the ground floors of its office buildings to "hand-picked bars, restaurants and coffee shops," transforming it from "a hodgepodge of car dealerships and second-hand stores."
I've always thought high rise structures should have balls.
I applaud Amazon for choosing an unconventional number.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
After the beast feeds, it clearly farts bubbles.
Oh, please don't. Folks are going to show up and expect tall beautiful
Women who will demand we mate with them or die.
All you'd have to do is locate it outside of town.
But no, no, you have to do things in the most expensive place possible.
What's your agenda?
Demonstrators will have more glass to break and I'll bet biospheres burn really good. And when they get thirsty, they'll have a great time looting those "hand-picked" bars........
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Did those owners pay the other property owners to surrender their air rights so that the Space Needle could have unobstructed views, or are they merely trying to seize a right to prevent others from building structures that are equally high? I.e., a real estate version of pulling the ladder up behind you.
thanks to investment in public transportation, Seattle actually has less traffic than it did a decade ago, despite its growth in employment and housing.
According to the Seattle DOT Traffic Report (2015), Seattle added nearly 100,000 people in the decade from 2004-2014, while average daily car traffic in the city fell by some 60,000 trips over the same period. The travel demand created by population and job growth is being absorbed by the transit system
source
...host more than 300 plant species from around the world.
Though it smacks of medieval royalty's penchant for importing the rarest of beasts from farthest flung points in the realm.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
So Amazon will have massive maintenance costs from such a unique building design plus the cost of tending endangered plants. What happens when Amazon wants to cut costs, downsize, or just 'return to core functions'? Will the municipal council take over the park-lands? Will Amazon demand corporate welfare or just gut/burn the park-lands?
This is like the monorail craze of the '80s; How about some future-proofing?
Few things:
Who will take care of them all? I doubt local landscaping companies are familiar with exotic endangered plants from all over the world.
No doubt many of the plant seeds and pollen will get out with workers walking around it all day. I fear there could be invasive species among the 300+ plants from all over the world.
What's wrong with second hand stores? Don't millennial hipsters brag about half priced books and such.
My Amazon package was marked by USPS as delivered today but it's nowhere to be seen. I understand the feeling behind "Going Postal"..
Never leave work. Enjoy the freedom of our garden, meet in our trees, breathe our air. Besides, where would you go? Home?
Sounds nice at first, but like moving next to a lake, soon you're overrun by insects. I'd never work in an office building where I had to swat at real bugs during a meeting nor want to risk bird shit seeping down my monitor's vent holes. I'd also prefer not to be brought up on federal charges if I accidentally kill an office plant.
Amazon: Just an over-glorified Wal-Mart
You've heard of capsule hotels? Amazon could build capsule apartments in the basement and rent them to their employees at a merely exorbitant rate.
So there's your home. If you're tired, you can nap in your capsule and go back to work refreshed. You'll never have to leave the building.
They could even rent out space to a mortuary and crematorium. When you die they can cremate you and ship your remains to your closest relatives, free shipping if they're Pime members.
Biosphere. God, what a metaphor! In other words, a self-contained inhabitable zone shielded from the harsh environment of--gasp--Seattle.
The whole point of locating in a city is to be part of the city. Let your employees meet for lunch at a local restaurant that hasn't been hand-picked by Amazon's Director of Restaurant Planning. Use the transportation system that the locals use, improving it for everyone in the process. Go to a public park to chill out, rather than a private park reserved for Amazon employees.
This kind of office park is all over Silicon Valley. To someone who's never worked in this environment, it sounds like a huge perk. But having worked in an environment like this, I'd rather just work in Seattle, not in a biosphere surrounded by Seattle.
The 100-foot-tall trumps -- Amatrump calls them Biotrumps -- will host more than 300 trump species from around the world, creating what the trump sees as the workplace of the future. Amatrumps will be able to break from their daily labors to walk amid the trump along suspension trumps and climb into meeting spaces resembling trump nests perched in mature trees... Many of the plants are endangered trumps, meaning that the trumps double as a conservation project.
Side note: Of course they need to build these "biodomes", after helping to wipe out zillions of acres of native habitat. Right? Makes total sense. While it's nice hosting species from around the world, how about rebuilding NATIVE plant populations and NATIVE habitats, i.e. by not crushing them with idiotic quarters for your slave labor work force.
One one hand, revitalizing city centers is not necessarily a bad thing. On the other, this starts to smell a little of Shadowrun-style megacorporations (or of industrial-era company towns).
Live and work your entire life within the protective confines of your employer. Go to the company school, work at the company office, live in company housing paid for with a company-bank supplied mortgage, dine at your choice of company restaurants, vacation at the company resort, get a company funeral...
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
The one with him pulling the building outs of the ground to find the Space Needle is pretty cute https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jeffreifman/zoe-and-the-amazocalypse-daddy-wheres-the-space-ne
Who the hell wants to live near Seattle anyway?
The employee's will "walk amid the greenery", in other words they will be able to go outside without going outside.
Passionately Indifferent
Can't wait for the Facebook Book Building. I hope it's like the books with cutouts inside like in Shawshank.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Makes me glad I live in Indiana, part of flyover country, just south of Indianapolis where Google maps actually can direct you to less congested routes, and we have Gas Buddy. I forget what the gas prices I saw today were, but most of them were under $2 Goodwill Stores have their half-off first Saturday of the month deals and there are quite a few in reach. I pigged out on buying books. Bought 3 DVDs too. Scrooge, the best version of A Christmas Carol I've seen, the director's cut of Daredevil, and a Jackie Chan movie. My home library is nearly "complete". I need to buy more bookshelves. I just replaced the 720p 20-something (24 I think) inch screen TV I was using as a monitor with the 32 inch. 1080p screen TV I thought was all we needed as the main TV in the same room as my computer until I couldn't see some details I wanted to see, so I replaced it with a 40 inch. Got it from Walmart. Don't know what I'd do with 4K resolution. Got this great glass top computer desk at Goodwill. Maybe that life's not for you. But traffic? Not ever that bad, if you let Google Maps advise you.
Amazonians will be able to break from their daily labors to walk amid the greenery along suspension bridges and climb into meeting spaces resembling bird nests perched in mature trees... When the chickens come home to roost...
Just be glad you don't live in Beijing where you may need to bring food and water for 10 days.
Seattle misery: HUGE problems with traffic. New construction makes the traffic worse. Amazon and Microsoft abusing employees. Shockingly slow internet connections.
... CenturyLink (CTL) customers trying to access particular sites from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. will have unbearably slow speeds."
Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (February 23, 2014)
Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book (May 23, 2012)
Traffic: Seattle one of the worst U.S. cities for traffic congestion, tied with NYC (March 31, 2015) Quote: "An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic may not sound like much, but when it adds up over a year it becomes 89 hours." (Whoever wrote that must be accustomed to Seattle misery. An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic sounds HORRIBLE.)
Slow internet: Many areas of Seattle have poor internet connections. See the article, These places have the slowest Internet in the country. (June 25, 2015) Quote: "... Seattle
There was a time when Seattle seemed to be headed towards a Boeing economic mono-culture of sorts, and when company employment cratered in 1970, the whole region felt it. At such point as something awful happens to Amazon - say, shareholders demanding a reasonable profit - it could get a bit dark in the CBD.
Luke, help me take this mask off
It seems to me that there is a general problem with how humans manage cities. Population density is allowed to become so great that cities become miserable.
Portland, Oregon now has constant traffic jams. A short ride from downtown Vancouver, WA across the bridge to Oregon required 6 minutes 44 seconds in 2012. It required 25 minutes 7 seconds in 2015, almost 4 times worse. See I-5-Study. (PDF file, See page 3.)
Waiting for them to change the company name to "Renraku".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This fits nicely with Blue Origin. It's one thing to get to space but you're going to need habitats and biospheres and other large scale structures once you get there. Bezos has talked about moving industrial activities off Earth along with mining asteroids.
I suspect they will learn a thing or two about building these structures on Earth that will be applicable to the longer-term goals of the space-faring Bezos.
They took all the trees, and put them in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half each to see 'em
- Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi
He wrote a novel called, "The Water Knife." It is his second novel after "The Windup Girl." About "The Water Knife" to see why it popped into my head. http://www.goodreads.com/book/...
photosMy Photostream
Amazon - the thrusting company for Millennials who want to work for 1950s ideas. Their (Amazon, not Belgium's) death must be nigh.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"