Amazon Sonic
Most projects get designed once. This one went through design three times—and that was the plan.
Amazon asked the BA team to create a workplace that could adapt to shifting demands and individual preferences, with spaces as varied as the people using them. Construction rolled out in three phases over several years and, somewhere along the way, the schedule turned into a feedback loop. Each phase opened, people settled in, and what they told the design team shaped the next round. In a very real sense, the building revealed how to design itself.
The team treated the project like a living laboratory. Every phase was a working hypothesis about the modern workplace, and the people inside it were all collaborators.
Name
Amazon Sonic
Location
Bellevue, Washington
Size
1,000,000
Built to Learn
The staggered process handed the design something they are rarely afforded: the chance to watch a space in use before finishing the next one. After one phase was complete, the team paid attention to how teams actually worked in it, listened hard, and folded what they learned into the following round. Some hunches held up. Others were cheerfully retired.
That rhythm of listening, building, and learning turned a phased construction schedule into a design instrument. The result reflects how people work now, not how they worked when the project began.
Six Ways to Spend a Workday
A workday is never just one activity, so a workplace shouldn't be one kind of room. The design supports six modes of a real day at work: Explore when you need fresh input, Nourish when you need a good meal and better company, Focus when the deadline is real, Build when the team needs to make something together, Restore when your brain asks for a minute, and Gather when it's time to align, celebrate, or simply be in the same room.
Rising 42 stories with an unobstructed view of Mount Rainier, the tower gave the team space to think vertically. The interior unfolds as a journey through the Pacific Northwest, from the forest floor to the mountain's summit, with a variety of postures along the way to suit whatever work looks like at 2 pm on a Thursday.
Amenities That Meet People Where They Are
The standard playbook stacks the good stuff at the lobby. This project skips that. Amenity floors sit at transfer levels throughout the tower—so a great cup of coffee, a place to gather, or a quiet corner is never more than a few floors away.
The tone throughout is warm and rooted in hospitality, closer to a favorite hotel lobby than an office perk. The team also worked to make the experience frictionless, because the less energy people spend negotiating the building, the more they have left for the work and for each other.
A great workplace shouldn't make you commute within your own building.
Team Suites: Book a Room, Bring Your People
The BA team helped the client pilot a new concept of bookable Team Suites, furnished for meetings, heads-down work, or team building in a setting that feels more like a living room than a conference room. Teams can reserve a suite for a few hours or a few days—long enough to rally around a launch, a deadline, or each other while keeping up with regular responsibilities. It's a home base for coming together without asking anyone to drop their day job.
The Central Connection
Floors 17-19 form the building's crossroads: three stories built around choice, from collaborative team settings to focused solo work, designed to be easily reachable from anywhere in the tower.
Think of it as the building's town square. The premise is simple: people themselves are the best judge of what they need to do good work, and the building's job is to offer diverse options and then get out of the way. Users move through their day the way they move through a city, going wherever the environment fits the task.
Outside, Beyond the Fleeting PNW Summer
Because the tower steps back at each transfer floor, every amenity level opens onto a large terrace with regional views. The team didn't treat those as fair-weather bonuses. Sheltered outdoor rooms with power, Wi-Fi, and comfortable furnishings allow people to work and gather outside well past the Pacific Northwest's famously brief summer. A rainy Tuesday in October is still a fine day to take a meeting on the terrace.
What Was Learned in the Lab
Impact isn't a single moment—it's a cumulative effect, and this project proved it in real time. Three phases; three rounds of honest feedback; three chances to get it more right. Each iteration brought the design closer to what employees actually need for focus, collaboration, and innovation.
The exploration is continuous. The workplace keeps evolving, and so does our understanding of it. That's the point. Sonic gave BA a working model for designing environments that learn, and that's something that will be carried into every subsequent workplace design.
