Biospheres have been built in the seemingly endless sands of deserts–and not necessarily successfully–but it speaks to the vast wealth and grand schemes of today’s Big Tech that Amazon is realizing such dreams in an urban center. From Marcus Wohlsen at Wired:

“In case you doubted that the 21st century as envisioned by past generations’ pulp futurists had arrived, check out the biospheres Amazon has proposed to anchor its new Seattle headquarters.

Architectural firm NBBJ unveiled the drawings this week to mixed reviews from a city design board, The Seattle Times reported. The three glass-and-steel bubbles would include five floors of work space and would be large enough to house ‘mature trees.’

The idea behind the domes seems to be to give Amazon employees a flexible, engaging place to gather, in keeping with the prevailing tech industry notion that creative spaces encourage creative thinking. Unlike Silicon Valley competitors Apple, Google and Facebook, however, which all have sprawling suburban campuses with plenty of room, Amazon’s planned headquarters will sit adjacent to downtown Seattle in the fast-growing South Lake Union area.”