When the Spheres first opened on Amazon’s headquarters campus in Seattle, Jeff Bezos said the 40,000 plants inside the glass domes looked “happy.” Five years later, the employees using the unique office space look equally pleased.
As the more than 1,000 species of plants on display have grown and adjusted to life inside the man-made tropical setting, the experience and the ability to work in such an environment has grown on employees.
The Spheres have been averaging 1,000 Amazon visitors per day since opening in 2018 and 1.25 million employees and their guests have stepped foot in the space. Another 100,000 people have gotten up close to nature in the city on select Saturdays when the building is open to the public.
From the four-story Living Wall to Rubi, the 55-foot-tall Ficus rubiginosa that was lowered through an opening in the roof, everything looks a bit more robust and at home than when Bezos first asked Alexa to open the Spheres. And as the plants have gotten taller, so has Amazon, with new office towers on its campus that impact the light and shadows in the Spheres below.
“Things have done really, really well — almost surprisingly,” said facility manager Justin Schroeder. “It was an idea that had never been done before — how do we incorporate plants and people into this building where the people can work comfortably, but the plants have an environment where they can grow healthy? We got a lot right.”
Amazon is regularly innovating and experimenting with new plants, displays, educational opportunities, and technical tweaks to keep the space inviting.
Keep reading for highlights from GeekWire’s visit:
- Tweaks: Amazon is constantly learning what works and where in the Spheres. A supporting greenhouse facility east of Seattle plays a major role in allowing for plants to be tested in certain conditions. A chocolate tree was one of the first trees planted in the Spheres and it didn’t do well. It was removed, allowed to recover in the greenhouse for a year and a half, brought back, and is now thriving in a new location where there’s better light.
- Pruning: Trimming back plants is the bulk of Amazon’s morning maintenance, which starts every day at 6 and lasts for three hours. The Living Wall is constantly pruned to remove plant material and maintain diversity by keeping any one species from being overly aggressive. Large trees have a biannual pruning schedule and are maintained at a specific height in perpetuity.
- Light: “A lot of the pruning that we do is to let light into the understory,” Schroeder said. “These beams of light that cut through the canopy, that is by design.” While there is supplemental lighting to get certain plants through the winter months, “we do rely heavily on natural sunlight to keep the space healthy,” he added.
- Pests: Amazon did its best early on to exclude pests, but bugs do find their way in, especially on some of the larger trees brought in from other nurseries. The horticulture team does not use pesticides, so members check plants daily and release beneficial insects such as ladybugs on a weekly basis. “Things like predatory mites, that would be invisible to the naked eye, will go around and feed on juvenile insects and insect eggs to keep their populations as low as possible,” Schroeder said.
- Windows: There are 2,500 panes of glass in the Spheres and they’re cleaned daily. “You’ve got two sides of the glass you gotta clean and with the shape of the building it definitely takes a lot of time to get the glass clean,” Schroeder said.
- Popular workspaces: The Spheres feature 800 different seating options, from large conference tables to the Nest to lounge chairs and more. “The most popular spots are the spots that are closest to the plants,” Schroeder said. “If people can have plants around them or behind them, those are very, very popular spots. They usually fill up very quickly.”
- No birds or butterflies: “It’s something that we get asked a lot, but it would create another set of challenges,” Schroeder said, adding that birds are hard on plants because they like to chew on them. “We’re doing something right that you feel like you’re in a nature setting, looking for these other signs of nature as you walk into this space.”
- Staff: The horticulture team has grown to support not just the Spheres but other buildings where Amazon has been incorporating nature and living displays. Operationally there are 70 people that work daily to support the Spheres specifically, from engineers to window washers to docents.
- Employee perspective: Colin Piwtorak has been working as a docent in the Spheres for four years. Standing in a certain zone among a variety of species, he’s most often asked, “What is that plant?” Piwtorak said the tough part about working in the space is that even with lots of training, there’s a lot to learn about a lot of species. They’re trained on plant families and groupings as a jumping off point. “It’s really easy to start picking up what guests are interested in — things that are blooming, things with cool features,” he said.
- The Living Wall: “It’s probably my favorite part of the space, it’s just so impressive,” Schroeder said of the focal point featuring 25,000 plants woven into the 4,000 square feet it occupies. “When employees walk in for the first time and look up and see this 60-foot-plus wall above them, jaws drop.”
- The Living Chandelier: In a new display, Amazon is experimenting with the same textile that’s in the Living Wall, but deployed in a different way. By squeezing 2,500 small seedling plants, representing 40 or 50 species, into the folds of fabric and hanging it so it can flow down, the chandelier is another example of innovating. “Think about a mossy branch in the tropics, it’s really trying to mimic that,” Schroeder said. The display, which grew in the greenhouse for a year, will be up for a month and then Amazon will analyze customer feedback about it.
- The biggest plant: Rubi, the tree that reaches to the tip top of the Spheres, was brought in six years ago after growing for the previous 48 years in California. Its canopy has doubled in size, giving visitors the intended feeling that they are walking through the center of the tree. Its height has only gone up a foot or two, so that workers can access its top and lights above.
- Photo ops: While visitors can be seen posing for pictures in various spots throughout, the Spheres are an office space, not an event hall. “We don’t do weddings,” Schroeder said. “The Spheres is a special space and we’re very mindful about the activities that happen in here so that it stays true to its original function to connect people to nature.”
- Is it like a library? “We don’t shush people,” Schroeder said. But there is no music or animal sounds pumped in. You can hear some light chatter, tapping on laptops and a waterfall at the base. “I think people kind of innately understand and are respectful of each other. We don’t have a lot of people making excessive noise. They come in here to experience that peace and calm.”
- The next 5 years: “Our goal for the building was to look like year five on day one,” Schroeder said. “So really what you see here is the overall appearance we want to maintain — the height of the trees, the density of the trees, the density of the plants. We’ll change things over time, push the envelope and innovate and try new things.”
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