Amazon HQ2 Holds Official Grand Opening

Michael Marshall Design is pleased to congratulate Amazon on the grand opening of HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia!

It is an honor for us at MMD, alongside our Gensler colleagues, to be a part of the design team for this highly anticipated project!

Article Below Partially Reprinted from The Commercial Observer, June 15, 2023

Amazon’s second headquarters (HQ2) held its official opening Thursday in Arlington, Va., and the e-commerce giant touted that Metropolitan Park will be one of the most climate-friendly developments seen in the region.

“HQ2 was built with sustainability at its core,” Holly Sullivan, Amazon’s vice president of economic development, said during the ribbon-cutting event.

The two Met Park buildings are made with low-carbon materials, feature a variety of green spaces, including 2 acres of green roofs and an urban farm, and will be powered with 100 percent renewable energy from a solar farm in Virginia.

In particular, the construction materials used in the 2.1-million-square-foot complex included low-carbon concrete and mass timber to reduce the embodied carbon. The result is that Met Park will have 20 percent less of a carbon footprint in its concrete structures compared to the industry baseline, per the company.

On the operational side, the buildings are designed to minimize the operational carbon footprint via electrified energy-efficient protocols and advanced ways to reduce water. In fact, Amazon completely eliminated the use of fossil fuels within HQ2 for daily operations and runs with zero operational carbon emissions, the company said.

Met Park is also on track to be the largest LEEDv4 Platinum building in the U.S., the highest level of LEED certification available.

“On behalf of all of us at MMD, we are proud to be a part of the team that brought this workplace to life,” said Michael Marshall.

Learn more:
– Amazon debuts its new Virginia HQ2 headquarters | Fortune
– Amazon announces opening of HQ2 offices in Arlington, Virginia (aboutamazon.com)
– 15 cool things Amazon employees found inside the new Virginia headquarters (aboutamazon.com)