Amazon Inc opens rainforest-like office space in Seattle

Amazon.com Inc yesterday opened a rainforest-like office space in Seattle, US, that it hopes will help employees generate new ideas. While cities across North America are vying to host the Seattle-based company's second headquarters, the world's largest online retailer continues to expand its main campus.

The Spheres complex, will officially open to workers today, and will mark the high point of a decade of development. The three glass domes of The Sphere are home to around 40,000 plants of 400 species.

The glass orbs were built to give Amazon workers a respite from emails, meetings, reports and deadlines and to walk along stone paths beside waterfalls.

The lush greenery coupled with the moist, tropical air it is hoped, will inspire employees to envision new products or plans.

The office space has walkways and unconventional meeting spaces with chairs instead of conference rooms and or desks.

The biggest sphere is 90 feet high and 130 feet wide and once inside, visitors first notice the warm, moist air, about 72 degrees and 60 per cent humidity, in sharp contrast with the 30 per cent humidity in a typical office.

Just inside is a five-storey wall covered with greenery. The climate varies across the space to allow visitors to find a "micro-climate" to their liking.

The domed structure is just a stone's throw from the executive office tower where Bezos leads the online retail behemoth.

From the outside, the four-storey Spheres structure looks like three connected glass orbs planted into the ground in a caterpillar shape. Lighting is designed for creating an equatorial effect with 12 hours of shade and sun.

Amazon's Amazonesque rainforest-like office space houses over 40,000 plants from 50 countries on five continents, with the centrepiece being a 50-ft fig tree.