Here Are the Latest Renderings of Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus at National Landing

Virginia Tech unveiled detailed plans on Tuesday for the first academic building of its Innovation Campus, coming to National Landing as part of JBG Smith’s broader development of Amazon HQ2. Construction of the campus is slated to begin in 2021 in a mixed-use district of North Potomac Yard, near Alexandria’s border with Arlington.

International architecture firm SmithGroup designed the 300,000-square-foot building with an emphasis on sustainability. When it’s completed in the fall of 2024, it will house offices, instruction and research spaces, and testing labs for graduate programs in computer science and computer engineering. The building’s angular shape, along with solar panels and photovoltaic glass, will capture sunlight to generate power.

Plans for the Innovation Campus were included as part of Virginia’s winning bid to land HQ2. The campus is intended to attract tech talent to National Landing. Ultimately, it will comprise three buildings on about four acres. In addition to graduate-level computer engineering programs, it will also include space for startups.

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Marisa M. Kashino joined Washingtonian in 2009 as a staff writer, and became a senior editor in 2014. She was previously a reporter for Legal Times and the National Law Journal. She has recently written about the decades-old slaying of a young mother in rural Virginia, and the brazen con of a local real-estate scion. Kashino lives in Northeast DC with her husband, two dogs, and two cats.