US Census Bureau Headquarters
Washington, DC
Project Type: New Construction
LEED® Status: LEED® Silver Certified
Opening: March 2007
Construction: 1.5 million sq. ft
Architect: SOM / HKS
AD Scope: Acoustics, Noise Control
Sound Isolation, AV infrastructure
When the United States Census Bureau outgrew its 1942-vintage home, the General Services Administration (GSA) commissioned Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) to design a new, 2.5-million-square-foot corporate office complex on an adjacent, 80-acre wooded site. HKS—the architect of record—contracted AD to provide acoustic design and a/v infrastructure.
One of the interesting things about the project is that every 10 years the agency has three times the number of employees. SOM organized individual workstations into open-plan “bull pens,” flexible areas that can be expanded from four workstations to 10 when the bureau staffs up for census-taking.
