Unable to be constrained by its existing offices in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood, Amazon is expanding operations to three new skyscrapers a few minutes' walk south, in Denny Triangle.
In the shadow of those towers will live the so-called Biospheres: three giant, glass domes, slated to open up in 2018, that will be filled with greenery, including endangered species.
The idea is to give Amazon employees something of an oasis in the middle of the company's famously demanding corporate culture.
It's hard to miss the biospheres when you're walking up the street.
Matt Weinberger/Business Insider
You don't really get a sense of how big they are until you get a little closer.
Matt Weinberger/Business Insider
Here are all three. The closest one looks like it has all its glass in place.
Matt Weinberger/Business Insider
The one in the middle is only half done, and the one closest in this picture doesn't have any glass.
Matt Weinberger/Business Insider
It may seem like one big, continuous piece of glass on the completed dome, but if you look closely, they're actually piecing it together like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
Matt Weinberger/Business Insider
When all is said and done, the domes will be the centerpiece of a park, complete with grass and a dog run. They're being built in the Denny Triangle neighborhood — about a 15-minute walk from Seattle's famous Space Needle.
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The 100-foot tall domes, scheduled for completion in 2018, will be filled with more than 300 plants that are endangered species, essentially turning the place into a conservation project as well.
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John Schoettler, Amazon's global real-estate director, recently told Bloomberg the goal was to create a link to the natural world so Amazon employees could brainstorm while taking a breath of fresh air.
The domes are in the shadow of Amazon Tower I, better known as 'Doppler' — a reference to the Amazon Echo's internal codename while it was still in development. This building only opened in 2015 ...
Wikimedia Commons
... and comprises the first of three brand-new Amazon skyscrapers that will house most of the company's operations. Amazon Tower II, pictured here as of February 2016, is slated to open in September 2016, with Tower III opening in 2019.
Wikimedia Commons
All of this construction just shows how incredibly fast Amazon is growing: From 1998 to 2010, Amazon was headquartered in Seattle's Pacific Tower — a former Veterans Affairs Hospital — but it's hiring so many people that it was bursting at the seams.
Amazon
You may have noticed there aren't really any Amazon logos on the tower or the domes. Amazon prefers to keep a lower profile — this is Day 1 North, one of its main buildings in Seattle, and it's totally nondescript except for the name on the right.
Matt Weinberger/Business Insider
Similarly, this is the main plaza of the Amazon urban campus, about a 15-minute walk from the Biospheres. It's low-key, like a city college campus, and anyone is allowed to use it. It's my understanding that it even hosts farmers markets.
Matt Weinberger/Business Insider
I'm not going to lie, though, I was disappointed to find that Amazon has shuttle buses to take employees between the old buildings and the new — I was hoping Amazon was shuttling them around by Prime Air drones.
Andreas Rentz/Getty
Meanwhile, here's an official Amazon recruitment video showing off its urban campus:
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Matt is a former Deputy Editor, Tech based in San Francisco. Matt came to Business Insider in 2015 from IDG Enterprise, where he reported on application development and new enterprise technologies for CITEworld, Computerworld, and Networkworld.
