Ideas Factories
In 2012, many of the best known technology firms were actively designing and building new corporate offices. It’s the first time Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Google and Facebook have done so from the ground up. The same is true for Amazon, which is building in Seattle pursuing a distinctive new campus design. The architectural firm NBBJ is designing Google’s new headquarters, as well as those for Samsung North America in San Jose, Calif., and Amazon in Seattle. A Seattle city review board has given the thumbs-up to an ambitious and unusual biodome design proposed by Amazon as part of its new downtown campus. On Wednesday, Seattle’s Design Review Board approved the design by architectural firm NBBJ.
The architects persuaded the review board that the design would be “engaging and inviting to the public passing by.” When completed, the new campus tracking LEED Gold will include 3.3 million square feet of office and retail space and will cover three city blocks. The three biodomes will be adjacent to three 28-story office towers and two midrise office buildings and a multipurpose meeting center seating 1,800 people.
WORK GLOBAL, LIVE LOCAL
NBBJ is working with Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, to revitalize Seattle’s Denny Triangle neighborhood with the creation of new corporate office space, groundlevel retail and public amenities.
To reflect Amazon’s communityfocused culture, the design seeks to build a neighborhood rather than a campus. Therefore, urban design principles play a prominent role in the project, with emphasis given to ground-level activity and diversity in building character.
For example, the design includes a public dog park, two-way cycle track on 7th Avenue with separate entrances for bicycle commuters that are remote from the garage and loading dock, and tower curtain wall systems that extend upward to screen rooftop mechanical equipment. In addition, ground-level retail on each street front will create a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood in an urban area dominated by surface parking lots.
As an added benefit for employees, the project also includes regularly spaced operable windows for the full height of the mid-rise and high-rise office buildings.
According to the Seattle Times, the e-commerce giant had its plan for a “five-story office building formed by three intersecting spheres” unanimously thumbs-upped by that city’s design-review board. In an attempt to “create an alternative environment” in the center of Amazon’s recently approved, three-block headquarters planned for downtown Seattle, NBBJ has submitted a revision that would replace a six-story office building with a tri-sphere biodome that will host various forms of plant life and provide a more natural setting for employees to work and socialize. Perhaps this change is Amazon’s way of “keeping up with the Joneses”, as many leading corporations – Apple, Google, and Facebook – have been unveiling plans to construct one-ofthe- kind office complexes centered around sustainability, innovation and collaboration.
The transparent, glass enclosure will be anchored by retail stores and provide 65,000 square feet of work, dining, meeting and lounge space, in addition to a variety of botanical zones modeled on montane ecologies found around the globe. Each sphere will be made up of five high bay floors, capable of fostering a mature tree.
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Materials provided by NBBJ