Amazon Inc., the famous e-commerce giant, has reportedly signed a lease to move its U.K. offices to a new Norman Foster-designed office building in the suburbs of London and we have a few renderings of the new tower.
Amazon will be shifting to Principal Place - a 15-floor, 600,000-square-foot office tower located north of the Liverpool Street Station - after 16 years in its office at Slough.
Amazon employs 1,700 people in its Slough office and another 12-storey building in Farringdon, Central London, who will now move into the Principal Place office, ZDnet.com reports. The online retailing giant has signed a lease to occupy 431,000 square feet of space in the tower, which can accommodate about 5,000 employees.
The Principal Place building includes a double-height lobby and two atria that run throughout the building. There will be 15 stories in the front and nine in the rear, Dezeen reports.
The building also has rooftop decks and retail areas. Outside, the place will have a basketball and tennis court and a residential arena as well.
Check out more photos of the Principal Place building here. Meanwhile, Amazon is also getting a "soap-bubble" shaped headquarters in Seattle soon. Take a look at the renderings of that office here.
Amazon's other London offices include the Amazon Development Centre on Glasshouse Yard and 60 Holborn Viaduct. The company is poised to take up space temporarily in 1 Leadenhall Court in April 2015, the website claims.
"We have already invested over £1 billion ($1.6 billion) and created more than 7,000 permanent jobs across the UK. To support our continued growth in the UK, we have secured this building giving us the capacity to hire thousands of new employees in London," Christopher North, managing director of Amazon.co.uk, said in a statement.
"I am very pleased that Amazon have confirmed their intention to create thousands of new jobs at a new base in east London. We are proving time and again that we have the right places and people to support this vibrant sector," Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, added.
Amazon is currently on an aggressive expansion mode. The company said that it would be spending $2 billion on an Asian expansion as it diversified its portfolio recently venturing into groceries and even gaming.
Experts say the expansion is logical.
"There are four or five tech titans have expanded outside their core, and are now stepping into each others' core businesses and competing for the future, the new opportunities. It's a really unique time. I think where Amazon is going makes a ton of sense," Robert Peck, analyst at SunTrust, was quoted by the Business Insider.
