In the belly of the beast

This week Henry and I went to visit my dear friend Tim Detweiller who now works at Amazon!! He runs a creative art program there. and being Tim, he is full of ideas and innovation, penetrating the Amazon behemoth with creative classes offered to employees for free.

But first let me set the stage.

This was a rare opportunity to go inside one of the 42 ( and still building) Amazon buildings on the massive take over of South Lake Union land.

Here is a map of the campus today. We needed an employee with a badge to get through the glass security gates. We went into the Doppler building which is the lowest one on the left in this campus view.

Once inside, we entered a radical new atmosphere for an office building, open floor spaces, a performer playing a guitar, , and a room where nursing mothers can store their milk and nurse their babies.

Soft music played, soft chairs awaited in every direction.

There were food stands with free bananas and outdoor spaces for dogs.

Dogs, Tim explained, were welcome in the offices, providing a means of social interaction. This roof garden had fake hydrants and logs, apparently a secret code saying dog in computer binary code. The art work inside the Doppler was coordinated by the brilliant Sam Stubblefield and it was full of subtleties.

As Tim now defines his cultural program : “The Expressions Program is a collaborative effort to promote and showcase creativity, community and diversity of thought at Amazon.” It is coordinated with a small team of assistants including Joseph Steininger ( left) who is a silkscreen artist.

 

 

It includes a lab where classes are held, a cart that appears here and there in the building, and a just started artist in residence program. Employees get to take time off to take the classes and they are free. Here is Tim in his lair.

 

 

The first artist in residence is Celeste Cooning. Tim took over a room formerly used for ping pong for her studio. Unfortunately there are no public events associated with this residency. But that is true of Amazon as a whole. Privitized, privitized, it it like a country club, very nice for the members who can afford the admission fee.

 

Tim also took us into the spheres, still only available by special permission with an employee.

They were amazing both in terms of engineering and the incredible plant life inside. Apparently there are hundreds of varieties of plants, one sphere has, as the assistant in the small public display area, declared, “old world” and the other has “new world,” a strange out of date classification.

 

 

 

It is coordinated by the chief horticulturalist Ron Galiardo.

with a large team to keep everything at the right temperature and alive (tropical, steamy where we were). There is a 40 year old fig tree in the middle.

 

Then we went to a public visitor area on our own where there were giant blow ups of various plants as well as an explanation of the construction of the sphere.

Apparently it is based on the Catalan solid discovered by a Belgian named Maurice Catalan in the nineteenth century.

 

So what to make of all this

Well. Amazon is certainly trying to make these privileged employees feel comfortable at work. THis building tended to have those affiliated with the more creative side of life, music, film, art.

Of course I have big problems with the extremely contrasting conditions for the non unionized warehouse workers. Hopefully they can at least visit the spheres also. Also creating this monumentally complex environment that is not part of our public sphere makes me uncomfortable. I kept thinking of our beautiful arboretum and Seward Park, how hard those people work to serve ALL of us, not just privileged employees.

Bringing in thousands of plants from various places, apparently they were grown for here, seems a lot of trouble, just to have these weird spheres in our downtown. Their nickname “Bezos Balls” fits them perfectly, they aspire to be iconic like the Space Needle, but of course, this is not part of a fair, or an historic event. Private property can only be a public icon when we can be part of it. As it is, I think it is an intrusion on our city. But then I never buy anything  from Amazon ever, since with every purchase, another small business is threatened.

 

Still, hats off to Tim for bringing creativity and serendipity into Amazon. Hopefully soon he will be able to at least have a public reception for his artist in residence.

 

 

I had a corporate week. I also went to Starbucks Annual Stockholders meeting ( I have a few shares in trust for my grandchildren). They are the opposite of Amazon in many respects. They are working to make the community a better place, hiring immigrants, veterans and refugees, giving health care to part time employees, supporting homelessness and being environmentally sensitive. Of course Starbucks is a huge behemoth driving small businesses out also, and neither of these companies allow unions, but at least Starbucks seems to care about the planet. And they seem to have achieved pay equity in some places.