Sunday Times 2
Battle of the hi-tech offices
Amazon plans to build a trio of 65,000-square foot glass domes in Seattle as parts of its new headquarters to take on Apple’s plans for ‘spaceship’ headquarters in Silicon Valley, San Francisco.
The domes will be filled with plants and have been dubbed ‘biospheres’.
Amazon's plans for a biosphere office resembles a greenhouse or conservatory. The three intersecting domes replace an earlier plan for a six-story building. It will be full of plants and be built over five floors
All the plants will be chosen specifically to survive in the microclimate of the domes that has also been designed to be comfortable for Amazon employees to work in.
The proposals were submitted earlier this week at Seattle City Hall’s Design Review Board and explain that the domes will have botanical zones arranged around office areas, a canteen and lounge.
The plans explain that the domes will be ‘a plant-rich environment that has many positive qualities that are not often found in a typical office setting.’
To achieve this Amazon will be creating the zones based on findings from studies that look into how plants and organisms live in mountain ranges around the world.
The domes and office space will be spread over five floors with shops and a kitchen on the ground floor, more shops on the first floor and office space on levels two to five.
Amazon has also previously submitted plans to build a skyscraper on the same location in Seattle between 6th and 7th Avenue.
The proposals do not say when the buildings will be completed and the completion date is expected to be announced once the plans have been reviewed.
Plans for Apple’s ‘spaceship’ headquarters were first submitted to planning officers in August 2011.
It was billed as ‘the best office building in the world’ but this title could now be under threat from Amazon’s glass domes.
It was billed as ‘the best office building in the world’ but this title could now be under threat from Amazon’s glass domes.
This new image shows what Apple's new HQ in California, will look like when completed in 2016. The new site has been dubbed 'The Spaceship'.
These images show exactly what the firm’s new Apple Campus 2, in Cupertino, California, will look like when completed in 2016.
Appearing as a giant saucer, amidst a dense jungle of trees, the 175-acre Silicon Valley site near the 280 Highway will house 13,000 staff.
Dubbed ‘The Spaceship’ because of its 360-degree curved glass fronted walls and central courtyard, it will also contain a 1,000 seat auditorium, a gym and 300,000 square feet of ‘research’ space.
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