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image of ‘Jeff’s Balls’: Productivity, biophilia and the ideology of Amazon’s Spheres

Abstract

This article examines Amazon’s Spheres, three spherical conservatories housing 40,000 plants that double as office space at the company’s headquarters. Constructed according to the principles of biophilic design, the Spheres are portrayed as improving worker productivity, creativity and well-being while signaling Amazon’s commitment to conservation. We question this premise and instead interpret the Spheres as sites of ideological inversion. This inversion happens in two ways. First, in stark contrast to the Spheres, we observe how Amazon’s warehouses are infamous for not only the injuries they cause workers but also for depriving workers of the kind of sensory stimulation that the Spheres are applauded for. We argue that whereas in the Spheres productivity is associated with harder to measure metrics such as ‘creativity’ it is in the low paying category of warehouse worker, where productivity measures are deployed as a form of despotic governance of workers by increasingly digitalized management. Second, we argue that Amazon’s Spheres are also cases of green gentrification transforming downtown Seattle, where the company’s headquarters are located. We end by reflecting on the ideological function of the Spheres, inviting environmental media scholarship to question the ideological meanings that are attributed to figures of environmental mediation. We argue that in the case of the Spheres the work of environmental mediation obscures the site’s political struggle rather than revealing them.

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2025-12-15
2026-04-11

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Keywords: green gentrification ; labour ; worklogistics ; productivity ; environmental media

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