Amazon HQ2: PenPlace

Working alongside a large, multi-disciplinary team, SCAPE is designing a series of public landscapes and open spaces for PenPlace, part of the new Amazon HQ2 in Virginia. Building on a legacy of county planning, the design is inspired by the native ecologies of the surrounding region: the rich cove forests of the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountains, the meadows and deltaic wetlands of the Piedmont and coastal plain, the Great Falls water system and the summits of Catoctin Mountain Park.

The historic hydrology of the site is interpreted through an ecological spine that runs along a primary circulation route, punctuated with water moments and program pockets—including a Headwaters Fountain at the North of the site in a lifted forest, a Confluence Fountain at the heart of the site next to an expansive Central Green, and a stormwater meadow at the South of the site that captures and filters runoff.

Throughout, the design carves out space for activity and program open to staff, residents and visitors alike—retail mews, flexible seating groves, an amphitheater, a dog run and an ADA-accessible, immersive forest pathway leading to a series of more intimate outdoor ‘rooms’ that buffer the I-395 corridor to the North. The re-imagined PenPlace also connects into transportation corridors and bikeways at an urban scale, helping create a more accessible, walkable and bikeable ‘green ribbon’ across Pentagon City and open up to the surrounding neighborhood and community.

Learn more:

• Read Adrian Higgins in The Washington Post (2021).
• Read Amazon’s June 2021 story on the regional landscapes that inspired the design.
• Read Amazon’s May 2021 update on open space design for PenPlace.