Amazon Is Building a High-Tech Greenhouse for Its Employees
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From ball pits to Ping-Pong tables, tech companies are notorious for outfitting their offices with awesome things. Now, Amazon is now furthering that trend by building a giant greenhouse for its workers, complete with a series of treehouses within.
The internet shopping giant is currently building a humidity- and temperature-controlled greenhouse — made up of three spherical structures — that will act as a recreational area for office employees, according to The Verge.
The greenhouse — which will be located close to Amazon headquarters in Seattle — will reportedly house more than 3,000 species of plants — most of them exotic, and many of them endangered.
Amazon has hired NBBJ, a design and architecture firm, to build the structure, according to ArchDaily.
Amazon hopes that the spherical greenhouse, which should open in early 2018, will become an iconic structure associated with Seattle — much like the Space Needle currently is — according to the Times.
The New York Times reports that Amazon’s greenhouse project is unusual because of its location in the heart of Seattle, rather than in a sprawling suburban campus that other tech companies are fond of using for their headquarters
But although the structure is shaping up to be a beautiful combination of architecture and horticulture, Amazon’s primary goal in building it is to inspire employees.
Studies have shown that greener offices tend to correlate with happier employees. And Amazon’s greenhouse seems to be the next logical — if giant — step in that direction.
The Verge notes that the planned greenhouse isn’t actually inside Amazon’s offices. Although it’s nearby, employees will have to leave the office to visit the structure. But Amazon seems to be betting that they will.
Amazon currently isn’t disclosing the budget for the spherical greenhouse, but the company did spend nearly $4 billion dollars in the construction of its offices in the city, according to The New York Times.
