The John Wesley Powell Federal Building was designed by SOM architect Walter Netsch to house the offices, laboratories, and printing presses of the U.S. Geological Survey, a branch of the U.S. Office of the Interior dedicated to national cartography and geologic studies. Netsch’s design applied his trademark Field Theory, a method of rotating square and orthogonal shapes according to rules of Euclidean geometry. The building’s resulting grid is inherently flexible, permitting 100 percent expansion over time if required.

Project Facts

Completion Year: 1974
Site Area: 85 acres
Project Area: 1,000,000 ft²
Building Height: 94 ft
Number of Stories: 7

The “new town” of Reston, Virginia—established in the mid-1960s outside of Washington, D.C.—was one of the first post-WWII planned communities to use higher density housing and mixed-use development to preserve open space. In 1974, the U.S. Department of the Interior commissioned SOM to design a new Geological Survey headquarters on an 85-acre wooded site outside the town center.

The Geological Survey studies the nation’s landscape and natural resources through multi-disciplinary research. Previously, the Survey’s offices had been scattered throughout 30 separate locations in downtown Washington, DC. SOM’s design represented the first building created expressly for Survey programs, which required heavy laboratory loading, rock storage, extensive use of water tanks in hydrology labs, and a printing plant for the world’s largest color presses.

Architect Walter Netsch designed the building with respect to programmatic needs, the town’s planning principles, and the site’s topography. He arranged the building’s footprint so as not to interfere with the natural lay of the land. At the high point of the site, the low-rise printing plant blends into the woods, while the multi-story office tower remains at the low end of the site in response to the scale of the surrounding trees.

Netsch designed the building with “Field Theory,” a system he developed that uses rotated squares as building blocks for complex shapes. The design supports 2,500 staff members and 1,600 parking spaces, with the built-in capacity to expand 100 percent over time. Glass enclosures let in natural light and connect the interiors with the forest outside. The site was also planned with bicycle and pedestrian paths that lead into town, so that Reston residents could bike or walk to work.

The John Wesley Powell Federal Building continues to be occupied by Geological Survey staff. Its site-sensitive design and long-wearing finishes, chosen for their ability to withstand hard usage, have allowed the building to age gracefully in its picturesque environment.