Capital One Hall at Capital One Center // HGA

Text description provided by the architects.

Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia is the heart of Capital One Center, a new 24.5-acre, mixed-use urban redevelopment of Capital One’s corporate headquarters that opened in October 2021.

Situated within the growing Tysons East neighborhood, a vibrant residential and commercial district, The Hall comprises a variety of public spaces suited to host a range of large and small events—from community-based programs to international theater or concert tours—as well as office and meeting spaces for the company.

The Hall stands at a hub of multi-modal transportation options, where pedestrians, cyclists, Metro riders on the Silver Line, and drivers can come together to enjoy the convenience of a dynamic live, work, play environment enhanced by some of the area’s most unique offerings.

The building itself brings together key features of urban life, with a grocery store on the ground level, state-of-the-art performance and event space in its interior, and a fully landscaped rooftop park.

Conspicuously clad in bright white marble in a sea of glass-clad skyscrapers, Capital One Hall’s lustrous exterior facade is punctuated with vertical windows carefully embedded in the folds of the envelope to catch and reflect light into the public spaces while minimizing glare and solar heat gain.

Inside, deep granite flooring contrasts with warm walnut paneling and metal accents, framing the towering windows with their vibrant views of the neighborhood and shaping The Hall’s major event spaces.Key event spaces:The Atrium, a versatile space organized around four terraced levels with space for 1,600 people, which can be configured to suit a wide range of events.

Its floor-to-ceiling window panels flood the space with natural light, while rich wood paneling, a grand staircase, and marble bar anchor it in hospitality and warmth.The Vault is a black box theater with a capacity of 225, and is ideal for smaller, multi-disciplinary performances and presentations.The Main Theater features 1,300 seats for a stage with an orchestra pit and fly system.

It is poised to become the District of Columbia region’s newest venue for touring productions, concerts and unique performances, as well as corporate events.

The Perch is a rooftop park that hosts a number of distinct spaces designed to appeal to broad public use, including an open-air amphitheater for musical and theatrical performances, catering facilities adjacent to a biergarten for pop-up food events, bocce ball courts, lawn areas suited to outdoor yoga or summer movie nights, and a sculpture garden with works from distinguished artists.

Open to the public, visitors can enjoy The Perch by traveling through The Hall.

The Hall’s interior is designed to visually lead visitors from the entry vestibule at the retail street level to the main foyer on the second level, and further upward through a cascade of gallery spaces that spiral around the performance hall towards the public rooftop park (The Perch) a hundred feet above the level of the street—an arrangement playing on the literal and figurative connectivity the building aims to bring to its community as an event venue, public amenity, and gathering space.

Each area of the building offers a different level of intimacy—from the vaulted ceiling of the atrium with its open terraces and soaring windows to the cozy confines of the black box foyer. The VIP conference area for exclusive meetings contrasts with the liveliness of the public rooftop park with expansive vistas.

With a constrained footprint, the building’s designers took special care to combine these disparate elements without sacrificing on the quality of the experience for patrons.

Some of the most challenging aspects of the design offered opportunities to devise unique solutions that enhance the building’s appeal, including the following:Materials Selection. Purposeful use of interior materials identifies unique spaces — rich millwork paneling surrounds the theater while glass-framed granite and terrazzo perimeter staircases lead from one indoor terrace to the next.

(Refer to the following page for additional material details.)Vertical Connections. Given the building’s horizontal space limitations, vertical connections became a unifying theme in the design. Inside the theater, this enabled designers to bring the audience much closer to the stage than is typical, offering patrons a more intimate proximity to the performance.Noise Mitigation.

The theater spaces are meticulously engineered for acoustic and vibrational isolation from the human and vehicular traffic that surrounds them. Rubber pads like those used on suspension bridges insulate the performance spaces while the perforated metal of the theater’s interior walls conceal advanced acoustic enhancement systems to diffuse and absorb noise for optimal sound quality.Form Meets Function.

The serrated design of the atrium ceiling both echoes the building façade and provides deep areas suited to tree planting for the rooftop garden. Terraced levels within the Atrium are repeated in the staggered elevations of the outdoor spaces.The design of Capital One Hall breaks ground in achieving all of these aims while adhering to some of the highest standards in sustainability.

Water efficient landscaping, along with stormwater quality and quantity controls exceed standard performance. Local and recycled materials were prioritized for the building’s construction materials and finishes, and Capital One is already committed to a green cleaning program. Finishes and coatings have been selected for low or no emissions to help promote human-healthy indoor environments.

The building envelope has been optimized for daylighting and views, as well as mitigating solar gains and reducing energy loads. Heating and cooling systems are zoned and optimized to include energy recovery systems which, combined with the optimized envelope, are anticipated to achieve more than 27 percent energy savings as compared to a code-compliant building.