Think about the typical office, and in your opinion, what seems to be missing? Most offices feel sterile, tense, perhaps a little cold, and definitely stifling. If you’re like a lot of people, you might even dread going to the office each day.
In fact, many of us notice that our creativity plummets in the office and that our best ideas come to us in other spaces. Don’t you feel more energetic and alive when walking through the park, or hiking in a national forest? Certainly more than you do while trapped inside a modern office building. It’s a common problem and one that Amazon’s Seattle Spheres was created to address.
The inspiration behind the idea is both simple and revolutionary: If workers feel more energized, focused, and creative outdoors, then why not bring the outdoors into the office?
The large glass structures were constructed to allow maximum light into the building and then were filled with living walls and lush gardens. When the rest of the world turns gray and drab from autumn into winter, the abundant plant life inside the Seattle Spheres remains as soothingly green as ever.
In May of 2017, the horticulture team installed the very first plant in the Spheres; an Australian tree fern arrived on an Amazon Prime truck and become the first of 40,000 individual plants now thriving inside the dome.
Today, the Seattle Spheres house not only Amazon offices but also serve as an educational opportunity for students from surrounding areas. And of course, the Spheres provide a model for the rest of us. While we can’t all construct our very own multimillion-dollar biodomes, we can all strive to bring more of the outdoors into our office spaces.
Plants clean our air, provide soothing ambiance, and spark creativity. If the Seattle Spheres intrigue you, consult with us about how you can incorporate ferns, succulents, and living walls into your own office space.
