When Amazon set out to design and build Metropolitan Park—the 2.1-million-square-foot first phase of the company’s HQ2 development in Arlington, Virginia—company officials had one question when it came to sustainability.

“It was, ‘How far can we go?’” says Gina Klem, Amazon’s director of workplace innovation and sustainability. “We wanted to do everything that we could do. We were committed to making sure the project achieved at least LEED Gold certification, but we were targeting Platinum.”

With Platinum certification serving as Amazon’s sustainability north star, designers and builders consistently made envelope-pushing decisions that minimized the carbon impacts of construction, optimized building operations, and led to a superior experience for both employees working inside the building and community members who enjoy the 2.5-acre outdoor park and 50,000 square feet of local small business retail space at the site.

As a result, Met Park (as the first phase of the company’s East Coast second headquarters is known) recently became the largest project ever certified Platinum under LEED v4 for Building Design and Construction. Even more important, perhaps, the project unlocked lessons that have already influenced Amazon’s other construction projects and will reverberate throughout the green building industry for years to come.

“We did this both for our employees and for the community, but the project was also meant to demonstrate what was possible in sustainable design and construction,” Klem says.

A sofa in the foreground and other lounge amenities in the background. — Phase 1 of the HQ2 development includes Amazon offices and staff spaces, outdoor resources and local retail. Photo credit: Amazon.

Fernando Arias, LEED AP BD+C, a sustainability lead for Met Park, calls the project “an exhilarating journey” marked by opportunities to innovate. “From the outset, our teams and I were driven by a deep-seated belief in the transformative power of this project—not just as a physical space, but as a beacon of environmental stewardship and community engagement,” he says. “The ambition was high. Our hopes were anchored in creating a place that would not only redefine the urban landscape of Arlington, Virginia, but also serve as a model for future low-carbon developments worldwide.”

Wes Sullens, a director on the LEED team at USGBC specializing in materials and resources, describes Amazon as “forward-thinking” in its approach to sustainability, citing initiatives such as the company’s plans to put 100,000 electric delivery vehicles on the road by 2030. A project like Met Park, Sullens says, not only helps Amazon to mitigate climate risk and demonstrate environmental responsibility to employees and shareholders, but it also helps to set a new standard for sustainable design that he expects to see “trickle down” to other buildings around the world.

“These large projects are really international, and when you have a flagship Platinum building like this, it really sets the tone for all of the other buildings that a company is going to build,” Sullens says. “Not every building will get certified, but the company will certainly follow a lot of the design specs and sustainability techniques that have been successful for them. It also creates peer pressure for the rest of the industry. Competing companies see a new yardstick that they want to meet.”

A set of modern high-rise office buildings against a blue sky. — The LEED Platinum Met Park. Photo credit: Amazon.

Optimizing efficiency

In 2019, Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge with Global Optimism—committing to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2040 (a decade ahead of the Paris Climate Agreement) and putting $2 billion toward a fund to support the development of sustainable technologies and services. The pact now has more than 470 signatories in more than 40 countries, including companies like Microsoft, Uber, Visa and Mercedes-Benz.

“We are a very large company, and with that comes a large responsibility,” Klem says. “We have the ability to not just eliminate our own carbon footprint, but also encourage others to do so.”

The buildings are completely electric, and Amazon will power 100% of HQ2’s operations with renewable energy, sourced from a new 120-megawatt solar farm. Although the solar farm isn’t owned by Amazon, it will provide power for all the company’s operations in Virginia (including Amazon fulfillment centers and Whole Foods stores), with the excess providing clean energy for the region.

While project teams also sought to make systems as efficient as possible, this wealth of renewable energy allowed designers to dedicate more focus to other important sustainability features, says Charlie Gronek, LEED AP BD+C, a development manager and sustainability expert at Seneca Group, which served as Amazon’s owner’s representative during design and construction.

“It shifts the conversation in a really important way,” Gronek says. “Sometimes, getting that last little percentage of energy efficiency requires a huge effort. When you have 100% renewable energy sourcing, you can look holistically at the best way to reduce the total carbon emissions associated with the building. It also helps us to incorporate something like a greywater recycling system, which uses a bit of energy, but saves a lot of water.”

Trees and landscaping in front of office towers. — All of Met Park’s landscaped areas are irrigated with 100% reclaimed water. Photo credit: Amazon.

Indeed, water was another major focus for the teams working on HQ2. One major win came when designers realized they could repurpose water that was being pumped out to accommodate an underground parking garage, using it in a water-cooling heat exchanger. “It’s this mindset of looking at your resources, looking at what you have available to you and how you can make an impact,” Gronek says. “That alone is estimated to save over 700,000 gallons a year of water.”

Met Park is designed to recycle a total of over 7.5 million gallons of water per year by capturing and reusing rainwater, greywater from showers and HVAC condensate. Using nonpotable water for flush fixtures saves over 4 million gallons per year (and, Klem notes with a laugh, also triggered local regulations requiring bathroom signage advising against drinking the toilet water). Also, all of Met Park’s landscaped areas are irrigated with 100% reclaimed water. In all, Amazon achieved more than a 50% reduction in indoor water use, and nearly a 40% reduction in water use for its cooling towers, compared to industry baselines.

Sullens says the project shows that Amazon is committed to backing up its environmental pledge with meaningful action. “It’s one thing to make commitments, and another to follow up on them,” he says. “Amazon is actually doing it.”

Pushing sustainable materials forward

To achieve its sustainability goals for Met Park, Amazon had to go beyond operations and look for ways to reduce the carbon impact of the materials used to construct the project (also known as the embodied carbon emissions of materials). In some cases, that data on embodied carbon impacts of materials—found in environmental product declarations (EPDs)—did not yet exist, but the scale of HQ2 was enough to motivate suppliers to develop them.

“Today, the idea of tracking embodied carbon through EPDs is pretty normal—or, at least, it’s becoming increasingly normal,” notes Brian Earle, a principal at ZGF Architects and the lead architect for Met Park. “But we started this project in 2019. When we had those conversations with the local contracting community, the response we typically got was: ‘EPD…what?’ We spent a lot of time working with suppliers and subcontractors to help them understand what we were talking about.”

“You need these big projects to drive demand for things like EPDs in areas where you don’t have them, or if manufacturers are on the fence about doing the work,” says Sullens. “This is one of those keystone projects that allows the projects that follow after it to leverage those same resources. There are some anchor projects that tend to really move the needle on getting new sustainable materials into the market, and this is one of those big ones.”

Plush furniture in a lounge near the cafeteria — Sustainable materials choices were a major focus of the project. Photo credit: Amazon.

Pendant lights, booths and wood panel walls. — Sustainable materials choices were a major focus of the project. Photo credit: Amazon.

Most notably, Amazon required suppliers to reduce the carbon impact of the project’s concrete by 10% below the industry baseline and encouraged them to go further. Two local suppliers used an advanced low-carbon concrete mix design, as well as a curing technology in which Amazon invested through its Climate Pledge Fund, to double that goal—achieving a 20% reduction in the embodied carbon of the project’s concrete structures. The technology injects captured carbon dioxide into concrete, permanently removing the carbon from the atmosphere and trapping it inside a building’s structure.

To help suppliers, ZGF gave them access to its Concrete LCA Tool that allowed them to enter ingredients into a database and then see the estimated environmental impact of their mixes. Then, suppliers awarded bids could go out and obtain formal EPDs.

“Sustainable concrete is not necessarily new to the industry, but I think this was the first time where it was a pivotal goal from the onset, and it was top-of-mind for everybody,” says Jeff King, vice president at Clark Construction and project director for Met Park. “Having that goal at the beginning of a job allows us to challenge and push the market. It changes the mindset going into a job, and that’s really powerful.”

Met Park’s meeting center heavily incorporates mass timber in its design. The meeting center ceiling was constructed with cross-laminated timber and is supported by ten 70-foot glue-laminated timber beams. “Wood is a great way to reduce carbon, because the wood has sucked that carbon from the atmosphere, and then it holds onto it throughout its life,” Klem notes. “Mass timber has been great from a sustainable materials standpoint, but then it also just creates a really beautiful structure. These buildings are stunning, and it was exciting to see how you’re able to deliver a beautiful space while also prioritizing environmentally friendly materials.”

A concrete wall with abstract art adorning it. — Met Park achieved a 20% reduction below industry baseline in the embodied carbon of its concrete structures. Photo credit: Amazon.

Balancing priorities

Sustainability and the occupant experience can sometimes feel like competing considerations, since having good indoor environmental quality often means incorporating operable windows and ensuring enhanced ventilation, both of which can affect energy use in certain conditions. However, this does not have to be the case, notes Earle. “Balancing those is certainly a challenge, but that’s what’s great about working with a client like Amazon. They weren’t willing to accept either/or.”

The scale of HQ2, Earle notes, created opportunities that might not otherwise have been available. In a smaller building, for example, thermal gain and loss at the perimeter of the building would have been one of the main concerns regarding energy efficiency. In the two 22-story office towers at Met Park, though, the energy loads inside the building actually have a greater impact on overall performance. That made it feasible for designers to maximize the amount of glass on the building’s facade—not only creating a better environment for employees, but also dramatically reducing demand for electrical lighting. Earle says that 88% of office space at the project is capable of being naturally daylit.

The buildings also feature operable windows—a hallmark of Amazon facilities—and even have little green lights that turn on when outside temperature, wind speed and precipitation conditions are favorable, signaling to employees that it’s a good time to let a little air into their offices.

“Designing a space that is sustainable goes hand in hand with creating a space that people love,” Gronek says. “We spend so much time solving these design and construction issues, or trying to decide on the right plumbing system, but ultimately it’s about the people."

Planters above banquettes in a common room. — Greenery is part of the design inside the space, while landscaping, walkways and places to reflect outdoors also enhance the experience for staff. Photo credit: Amazon.

A walkway, bench and tree outside an office tower. — Greenery is part of the design inside the space, while landscaping, walkways and places to reflect outdoors also enhance the experience for staff. Photo credit: Amazon.

Gronek points to landscaped green roofs as an example of a feature that both delights occupants and helps make the buildings more sustainable. Eight of the landscaped terraces are actively programmed with amenities ranging from outdoor meeting spaces and dog runs to an urban farm that will provide produce to a local food bank.

“It’s about providing wonderful places for employees and occupants of the buildings to be outside and connect with nature, so they’re not necessarily stuck inside all day,” Gronek says. “It’s so refreshing and so wonderful when you get that feedback that you’ve made an impact and hear how people really love the space.”

Arias says the project led to a “profound” sense of accomplishment. “Seeing the tangible outcomes of our collective efforts—the vibrant spaces filled with life, the sustainable features operating just as we envisioned, and the community's enthusiastic embrace of the project—fills me with immense pride,” he says. “This project has reaffirmed my belief in the power of purposeful passion and innovative thinking to create meaningful change. Metropolitan Park is not just a personal milestone, but a step forward in our industry’s ongoing quest to build a more sustainable and inclusive future.”

Looking ahead

The second phase of the HQ2 project, dubbed PenPlace, is currently on pause, with no announced timeline for construction, but Amazon has said that its long-term commitment to Arlington remains unchanged. Currently, around 8,000 employees are working at Met Park, and the buildings can accommodate up to 14,000.

Ultimately, the direct sustainability impact of Met Park may be dwarfed by its downstream effects: the way that sustainable design features from the project are now making their way into other new additions to Amazon’s building portfolio; the lessons learned by organizations like Seneca Group, Clark Construction and ZGF Architects; the new capabilities and carbon disclosures of the area’s concrete suppliers and other materials vendors; and companies like the hundreds of signatories of The Climate Pledge that look to landmark projects like HQ2 to help crystalize their own visions of a more sustainable future.

A common area with chairs by floor-to-ceiling windows. — Of the Met Park office space, 88% is capable of being naturally daylit. Photo credit: Amazon.

“A massive project can really turn the tides,” Sullens says. “The direct positive effects of the building are huge, and then there’s also these spillover effects that help others to follow and be able to go farther.”

In some cases, these spillover effects can even combine with one another. For example, ZGF has now designed other projects that leverage more sustainable concrete, and the firm knows that local suppliers are knowledgeable about the material because of their work with Amazon. “I can’t overstate how important it is that we had the largest concrete suppliers in this market learn how to work in this way,” says Earle. “We’ve had several jobs, big and small, where we’ve taken this exact same approach, and if this project hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

Gronek at Seneca Group and King at Clark Construction echo Earle’s thoughts. “The coolest part about this project is the impact that it had on the market and on the community,” Gronek says. “These lessons that we learned, which sometimes seem small in the moment, then get scaled up as other companies are working on their own projects. It’s not going to be 2.1 million square feet of LEED Platinum space on every project, but our suppliers know these things now, and they can bring that knowledge to the rest of the industry.”

“We definitely learned a lot and put a couple of new tools on our tool belt,” King says. “One thing we saw that was really exciting is comments from subcontractors and clients, wanting to learn more. That’s awesome to see—how one influential client can have a lasting effect on everyone around them.”

While Met Park is an important milestone for Amazon, Klem emphasizes that the project is just that: one milestone on the long, continuing journey toward the company’s sustainability goals.

“It’s been several years since the project began, so much of what we did at Met Park, we’ve now integrated into everything else,” Klem says. “This is how we are designing and building projects now. We took all of our strategies and wrote them into our basis of design for any project that we do. The low-flow fixtures from these buildings are now our standard. It’s the same for materials and construction waste.”

“If we were to build this project today,” Klem adds, “it would do even more to drive down carbon and promote sustainability.”

Measuring the impact

Met Park’s sustainability features will help it to achieve a 24% overall energy savings relative to a comparable new office building—enough electricity to power 572 homes every year.
The 20% reduction in the carbon footprint of the project’s concrete structures saved 14,700 metric tons of carbon, equivalent to taking more than 3,200 cars off the road for a year.
The 7.5 million gallons of total recycled water used at the project each year is more than it would take to fill the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Eighty-two percent of all construction materials (including concrete, drywall, metals, wood, cardboard and plastic) were diverted from landfill—adding up to 17,000 tons of diverted material, which is more than four times the weight of the U.S. Capitol dome.

Amazon’s Met Park: Broad sustainability strategies set a superlative example