2007 VA ASLA Awards

General Design Professional - Discovery Communications Headquarters

Merit Award 

Project: Discovery Communications Headquarters
Landscape Architect:  EDAW, Inc
Architect: Smith Group
Client:  Discovery Communications
General Contractor:  Clark Construction
Engineers: VIKA

When Discovery Communications consolidated its workforce into a single corporate headquarters in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, it sought to create a landscape that was an amenity to it employees, visitors, and the community.

The landscape architect worked with the architect to create a site plan that recognized the major streets and oriented the building toward them, holding the streetwall, while creating and opportunity for a garden on the south side of the building.  The result is a disarmingly simple "L" shaped building which embraces the major thoroughfares while cradling a one acre site.  An open space south of the prow of the building is another open space or foyer on the main approach from the south.  These spaces were conceived by the landscape architect as two separate experiences - one a garden and the other a plaza.

Taken by the corporation's mission to communicate stories of nature and culture, the landscape architect devised two narratives in the landscape to activate the garden and the plaza to communicate that corporate mission to the users of the site.  For the plaza, the inspiration was the origin of the universe or the "big bang". This takes the form of a circle of random stone pavers with radially concentric brick bands emanating from the center, as if it were exploding.  A series of natural boulders, salvaged from the site excavation, provide seating in a random pattern throughout the plaza, reinforcing the notion of the big bang theory.

The garden was conceived as a green oasis for employees to gather.  The landscape architect conceived the idea of a sensory garden to recognize how people discover the earth.  The concept was to create a series of plantings to reflect the five senses: sight, taste, touch, and hearing.  For the sensory garden, the landscape architect researched the geometry of nature - fractals - as a means to capture an appropriate form for this content.  Fractals exhibit a self - similarity when iterated as mathematical formulae, and these iterations resemble the complex shapes of leaves, blooms, and braches - a perfect metaphor for a garden.  Thus, the form of the garden is visually striking, but derived from the very nature of nature.  The sensory garden features Quaking Aspen and Pennisetum in the south garden; Juniper and Lamb's Ears in the garden of touch; Mint and Thyme in the garden of taste; Day Lilies and Dogwood in the garden of sight; and Viburnum and Summersweet in the fragrance garden, to mention a few plantings.

The site reflects principles of sustainability through the fact that it is an urban infill, provided for the preservation of several street trees, utilized salvaged boulders, and features an intensive green roof, as the sensory garden is entirely atop a parking structure.