January 30, 2018

Jeff Bezos and Alexa open the Amazon Spheres

Photos by Brian Miller [enlarge]

Amazon won’t say what the Spheres cost, and nobody asked Alexa.

It was warm, rainy and humid outside the Amazon Spheres, which opened yesterday. But inside the new glass conservatory domes, the weather was merely warm and humid. Misters periodically sprayed the plants and visitors at 2130 Sixth Ave., next to the Day 1 tower in the Denny Triangle.

The grand opening ceremony included effusively grateful remarks from Gov. Jay Inslee, Mayor Jenny Durkan and King County Executive Dow Constantine, among other dignitaries. No one mentioned HQ2, though that was the subtext to their lavish praise for the three linked spheres and the company that built them.

Speaking on the top level of the Spheres, Inslee said, “This is adding to both the city's past and the future.” He cited the ratio of plants in the Spheres' botanical collection to Amazon employees in Seattle — about 40,000 each. He lauded Jeff Bezos' recent commitment of $33 million to a scholarship fund for the so-called Dreamers (children of undocumented immigrants), and saluted Amazon's planned creation of permanent space for Mary's Place, which shelters homeless women and children. “That's what these Spheres represent to us as well,” he said.

Constantine called the Spheres building “a landmark from its very inception. It shows Amazon and our entire region have entered a new era.”

“I really applaud Amazon,” said Durkan, who spoke of both “the urban challenges we have” and, mindful of HQ2, “the necessity of nurturing what we have.”

Amazon CEO and founder Bezos made his entrance last and alone. After accepting the kudos and recognizing Amazon's global head of real estate John Schoettler (“He has heart, and it shows”), he also delivered the shortest remarks.

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The Birds Nest, a private woven enclosure of sustainable hardwood, is near the top of the enclosure.

“Alexa, open the Spheres,” Bezos commanded. “Okay, Jeff,” the cyber-assistant replied. A blue LED halo lit up overhead, and the misters hissed their approval.

The Spheres are on the south side of the block bounded by Sixth and Seventh avenues and Blanchard and Lenora streets. The famous dog park is on Sixth, next to the employee entrance; while the new visitors center — called The Understory, which tells you all about the Spheres — is on Seventh.

Designed by NBBJ and built over the last two-plus years by Sellen, the Spheres have three main levels. In addition to the lavish horticultural collection, which will rotate specimens under the careful supervision of manager Ron Gagliardo, there are dozens of hang-out nooks in addition to general seating for Amazon employees. (The public can only access the Spheres as part of a general campus tour, which requires online registration.)

The plant-species selection now numbers about 400, representing five continents and 50 countries. As you climb in elevation, so does the flora.

The cafe Rana e Rospo is on level one, along with what's called the Canyon Living Wall. This is basically the concrete core — and almost a separate structure from the glass exoskeleton — NBBJ architects explained. On level two is the Forest Outlook and the coffee shop General Porpoise. Level three is the Canopy Walk area, with its specimens curated to suggest the upper reaches of a forest. The Canopy Walk itself is a wooden trestle that bounces slightly — but not alarmingly — with each step, leading to the Birds Nest, a private woven enclosure of sustainable hardwood.

Level four, the Skydeck, is more of a private events space. To navigate the Spheres, directions are thoughtfully engraved in the concrete floors at the top and base of the open staircase that connects all the levels. (The fire stairs, elevator and restrooms are within the central concrete core.)

There are no individual work stations in the Spheres, though there are abundant electrical outlets — and presumably the city's fastest WiFi — where employees can huddle with their laptops and colleagues. Much of the seating is bench-and-table style, to foster collaboration. In at least one of the individual nooks, perhaps better described as a pad, there are poolside chaise lounges where one might even take a nap.

The operative idea, said NBBJ's John Savo and Dale Alberda, was “to create an entirely different work environment (and a) human-centric space.” The brain is more active in a natural environment, they said.

Day 1 and Doppler towers are set away from the Spheres, said Savo, to create a “sun pocket” that will help the plants (and employees) thrive. Of the initial geodesic design, said Alberda, “I was freehand sketching. Those sketches eventually went into computer modeling with structural engineer Magnusson Klemencic Associates.”

Savo said, “All the steel you see was computer modeled.” The individual steel beams, with hardly a right-angle among them, were fabricated by Cameron Steel of Portland, then shipped to the site. Though most every member is unique, “it's modular,” said Savo. Most of the girders were bolted, and a few were welded. The tolerances were one thirty-second of an inch, according to NBBJ.

During his opening remarks, Schoettler recalled how he and Bezos toured through a very different South Lake Union around Halloween of 2011. They saw a neighborhood “in desperate need of a new vision. We began to think big, and did we ever.”

And, though Amazon now has around 13.6 million square feet in SLU and the Denny Triangle, he added, “Our work is not done.”

Later, during a brief media huddle, Schoettler explained the order of development in the Denny Triangle. The Doppler block, south of Day 1/Spheres, was first. Block 20 is underway to the east across Seventh. Blocks 21 is next, to be followed by Block 18 — where the vacant Days Inn building still stands.

The names come after the block designations. “Block 20 is going to be Reinvent,” said Schoettler.

And what's next for the Denny Triangle after blocks 21 and 18 are done? “I don't have anything left in my pipeline or on the horizon.”

Would he and Amazon do another Spheres-style marquee building? “Absolutely. This is really exciting. Architects, they get bored with a regular office tower.” And so, by extension, do he and Bezos.

But as to whether that next iconic project might be here or in HQ2-land, Schoettler smiled and said, “You never know.”

The Spheres total project size is relatively small, at about 130,000 square feet, he said. How much more did the bespoke building cost, per square foot, compared to an ordinary office tower? “It's a very unique structure with some very unique systems,” he said, referring instead to the $4.4 billion overall Amazon headquarters investment. How much the Spheres represent of that total may never be known.

But here are some hard numbers Amazon did offer about the Spheres:

• 600 construction jobs

• 620 tons of steel

• 12 million pounds of concrete

• 2,643 panes of glass

• 180 pentagonal “hexecathahedrons” — the shape of each “Catalan” window shape (named for Franco-Belgian mathematician Eugene Catalan, 1814-1894)

• 130 feet is the diameter of the largest central sphere, which is also 90 feet tall