Observatory Park

Great Falls, Virginia

Observatory Park is a six-acre astronomy park and complex in Great Falls, Virginia, which will include an education/museum building, a planetarium, a roll-top observatory and a sundial garden. The education building will house a lecture hall, classrooms, a library, a sundial-building workshop and a museum space for didactic displays and historical objects related to astronomy as well as the site's use during the Cold War by the Defense Mapping Agency.

Observatory Park

Great Falls, Virginia

Observatory Park is a six-acre astronomy park and complex in Great Falls, Virginia, which will include an education/museum building, a planetarium, a roll-top observatory and a sundial garden. The education building will house a lecture hall, classrooms, a library, a sundial-building workshop and a museum space for didactic displays and historical objects related to astronomy as well as the site’s use during the Cold War by the Defense Mapping Agency.

Located in a residential neighborhood, the building will be set into the ground to reduce its bulk and retain the park-like quality of the site. The museum building can be either entered from above, through a glass pavilion that will enclose the dome of the planetarium, or, via a ramp into a sunken courtyard. The 40,000 square foot education building is earth-sheltered on the south and west sides. The north and east elevations are gradually exposed as the park slopes down to the northeast. A green roof continues the plane of the sundial garden that covers the site. The building will include a number of sustainable design features and the landscape design will use a variety of local plants and low-maintenance field grasses.