Inside Amazon's Mini Rainforest Work Space Spheres (cnbc.com)

Amazon's indoor rainforest-like office space opened today after being in development for seven years. CNBC reports of what can be found inside the Spheres: The Spheres' three glass domes house some 40,000 plants of 400 species. Amazon, famous for its demanding work culture, hopes the Spheres' lush environs will let employees reflect and have chance encounters, spawning new products or plans. The space is more like a greenhouse than a typical office. Instead of enclosed conference rooms or desks, there are walkways and unconventional meeting spaces with chairs. Amazon has invested $3.7 billion on buildings and infrastructure in Seattle from 2010 to summer 2017, a figure that has public officials competing for its "HQ2" salivating. Amazon has said it expects to invest more than $5 billion in construction of HQ2 and to create as many as 50,000 jobs. The Spheres, designed by architecture firm NBBJ, will become part of Amazon's guided campus tours. Members of the public can also visit an exhibit at the Spheres by appointment starting Tuesday.

Comments

Top of Dotcom Bubble 2.0

[ErichTheRed]

When companies start showing off fancy real estate, or initiating a Hunger Games style race to the bottom for cities to be their next headquarters, it's a good sign the next bubble is coming to an end. Sun moved to a fancy new campus and were shortly bought by Oracle. There was an article a few momths ago about how Microsoft is building tree houses for their employees to work in. This is the second tech bubble I've lived through and the end always seems to be a new trend in office design.

I guess I'm old school. but I really don't like collaborative brightly colored preschool workspaces. I want a comfortable private workspace with decent temperature control and access to decent coffee/snacks. Even when I was younger I couldn't understand why people would voluntarily work crazy hours if an employer gave them a "fun" office environment.

The problem with the current office trend is that it's not easily undo-able. You can't easily go back from people crammed around cafeteria tables to even semi-private spaces without showing that it has a direct effect on productivity.

Re:Huh

[Locke2005]

The college towns in Texas like Austin might be an exception -- and Austin is where I predict Amazon's HQ2 is going. Austin is Portland's sister city; they have the same motto, "Keep Portland Weird" and "Keep Austin Weird". I think the assumption is that if you locate where the cost of business is the lowest, the talent will relocate there to work for you -- and be unable to find any competing jobs (See Grass Valley Group for their employee retention strategy; they initially located literally in the middle of a cow pasture in the mountains east of Sacramento. Nope, you couldn't commute to any other tech jobs from there, they were the only player in town!)