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Amazon continues to makes headlines with its labor issues, workers' rights, and headquarters expansion. However, that hasn't stopped the multi-billion-dollar company from growing, for better or for worse. A recent news report from NBC News shared Amazon's moves towards purchasing empty shopping... View full entry
In February, Amazon announced its latest design for a $2.5 billion headquarters in Arlington, "the Helix." Once visual renderings for the campus were released, the architecture community was quick to respond. Besides heavy criticism of its overall design, discussion regarding its surrounding... View full entry
Amazon has unveiled the latest design plans for the second phase of its $2.5 billion Arlington HQ2 campus. The proposal for the PenPlace site includes three 22-story office towers, several smaller buildings, a 250-seat outdoor amphitheater, public green space, and a fourth 350-foot swirling glass... View full entry
Amazon.com Inc. plans to open 1,000 small delivery hubs in cities and suburbs all over the U.S., according to people familiar with the plans. The facilities, which will eventually number about 1,500, will bring products closer to customers, making shopping online about as fast as a quick run to the store. It will also help the world’s largest e-commerce company take on a resurgent Walmart Inc. — Bloomberg
Marc Wulfrat, president of the logistics consulting firm MWPVL International Inc estimates Amazon will deliver 67% of its own packages this year and soon increase to 85%, Bloomberg reports. "In just a few years, Amazon has built its own UPS," Wulfrat continued. View full entry
Even before the pandemic reconfigured every aspect of our daily lives, it was clear that the cash register — the kind with a drawer that pops out after your groceries are tallied — was headed for the dust heap of technology, joining fax machines and CD players. Many convenience stores, like CVS, Rite Aid and Target, started installing self-checkout stations a decade ago. — The Philadelphia Inquirer
Architecture critic Inga Saffron of The Philadelphia Inquirer examines the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has supercharged the automation of grocery stores and other spaces, finding that with the boom in grocery delivery services that has taken hold since the pandemic hit, some purveyors... View full entry
Amazon is shelling out $1.15 billion in cash to acquire the former Lord & Taylor flagship in Midtown Manhattan, The Post has learned.
The Fifth Avenue landmark, which spans 11 stories and 660,000 square feet, will serve as Amazon’s New York City headquarters, housing several thousand employees in the coming years.
— The New York Post
According to The Post, the building had been initially been leased by WeWork to become the company's’s own headquarters, but after a series of scandals last fall, the plans fell through. Amazon will pay of $750 million of the remaining construction loan WeWork had obtained to renovate... View full entry
Amazon [has opened] its first grocery store to pilot the use of the retailer’s cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology that has previously powered 25 Amazon Go convenience stores in a handful of major U.S. metros. Based in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, the new Amazon Go Grocery store allows customers to shop for everyday grocery items like fresh produce, meat, seafood, bakery items, household essentials, dairy, easy-to-make dinner options, beer, wine and spirits, and more. — TechCrunch
According to TechCrunch, the store is 7,700 square feet in the front of house and 10,400 square feet overall, making it the largest use of Amazon's Just Walk Out technology to date. With a similar model to the Amazon Go convenience stores, shoppers use the Amazon Go app to check themselves in... View full entry
As the decade draws to a close, it might be worth considering one overlooked ten-year anniversary: In October 2009, the e-commerce giant Amazon introduced same-day delivery service. [...] Amidst these transformations, one long-standing building typology has found itself again at the cutting edge of commerce: the vertical urban warehouse. — Urban Omnibus
Architectural critic, curator, and educator Nina Rappaport penned an insightful Urban Omnibus essay on the revived vertical urban warehouse typology — and the physical infrastructure that surrounds these facilities — in the age of online retail and instant gratification. "New York... View full entry
Amazon is offering $20 million to the Arlington County Affordable Housing Investment Fund in exchange for being allowed to build a bigger headquarters complex in the county than zoning allows.
...it would be the greatest single infusion of money ever into Arlington’s housing fund, which in recent years received between $14 million and $16 million annually from the county government and $5 million to $6 million in loan repayments from developers.
— The Washington Post
According to The Washington Post, the affordable housing proposal has been long awaited by Arlington residents who worry about the arrival of thousands of well-paid Amazon employees and the higher rents and housing costs that could result. In exchange for the donation, Amazon hopes to... View full entry
Living in a smart home neighborhood, the Fergusons experience both convenience and surveillance. And that's typical in Black Diamond, where Lennar Homes offers smart homes as part of a 4,800 unit development that includes other builders. This neighborhood isn't a one off. There are smart home developments in suburbs outside of cities such as Miami and San Francisco. Lennar is making Amazon tech standard on each of the 45,000 homes it builds this year. — NPR
Families in a Lennar Homes development in the Seattle suburb of Black Diamond are settling into their newly built and Amazon smart technology-equipped homes — some to their excitement, others fearing constant surveillance. "In this community, there are smart homes on one side of the street... View full entry
Amazon said the new store would be distinct from organic and high-end chain Whole Foods Market, which Amazon acquired in 2017 for $13.7 billion, but declined to answer further questions about how the store would be different or what it would be called. — The Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times reports that the grocery store will feature conventional checkout services, unlike the company's Amazon Go stores, which do not have cashiers. The store, according to the report, will be distinct from Whole Foods Market establishments, as well. View full entry
With Seattle's housing costs increasingly out of reach, it's no surprise that Amazon, one of Seattle's largest employers, is dabbling in housing issues itself. According to a recent article by Aria Bendix of Business Insider, Amazon is following through in a surprising way: By building a homeless... View full entry
JBG Smith, the biggest developer in the D.C. area and landlord of Amazon’s future Northern Virginia headquarters, Tuesday announced that it would redevelop about 2.6 million square feet of space at five multifamily buildings and an office building in Crystal City. The buildings are all within half a mile of the Amazon headquarters site and near Reagan National Airport, representing part of a broader development push in the area now called “National Landing.” — Curbed DC
In total, JBG Smith plans to redevelop around 6.9 million square feet at National Landing with a third of that area devoted to office space and the rest developed as residential spaces that could generate between 4,000 and 5,000 dwelling units, as well as ground floor retail, reports Curbed DC... View full entry
In the height of daytime, the sky suddenly blackened, and day became night in Sao Paulo.
Sure, smog is bad in the Western Hemisphere’s largest city, where traffic jams can stretch for dozens of miles. But not this bad. What was going on? Was the end near?
— The Washington Post
A combination of meteorological events paired with smoke that had traveled hundreds of miles from intense forest fires in remote parts of the Amazon caused a period of sudden midday darkness in the most populous city in the Western Hemisphere on Monday, reports The Washington Post. Meanwhile on... View full entry
Investment in cloud infrastructure has surged since 2015, and the market for data-center equipment is expected to grow at an average annualized rate of roughly 16% this year and next, according to Citigroup Inc.
Cloud servers, though, typically have a lifespan of only about three years, according to experts, meaning that some of the earliest equipment already has passed its use-by date.
— The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the anticipated market for scrap metal and other components used to make cloud computing infrastructure. As the cloud computing era gets underway globally, efforts to recycle the short-lived data servers that power the cloud have been complicated by... View full entry
