The Aero­space Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Facil­i­ty (ACF) con­sol­i­dates research lab­o­ra­to­ries that were locat­ed in sev­en dif­fer­ent build­ings on Lewis Field into a sin­gle, sus­tain­able state-of-the-art research facil­i­ty con­sist­ing of effi­cient, flex­i­ble com­mu­ni­ca­tions lab­o­ra­to­ries, col­lab­o­ra­tion spaces, ane­choic test cham­bers, RF-shield­ed lab­o­ra­to­ries, col­lab­o­ra­tion spaces, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy sup­port areas, and a ded­i­cat­ed rooftop plat­form for com­mu­ni­ca­tions antennas. 

The build­ing was designed to sup­port the Artemis mis­sion, land­ing the first woman and first per­son of col­or on the Moon, using inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies to explore more of the lunar sur­face than ever before. 

The design team was asked to design the build­ing around a unique anchor point: an anten­na test­ing range. This space need­ed to be large enough to scan an anten­na dish up to ten meters in diam­e­ter, result­ing in an open inte­ri­or vol­ume of rough­ly 45 feet per side and 50 feet tall. Addi­tion­al­ly, the space had to be per­fect­ly shield­ed across an unusu­al­ly wide spec­trum of elec­tro­mag­net­ic fre­quen­cies to pre­vent inter­fer­ence while test­ing var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies. The design team turned to a unique con­duc­tive con­crete mate­r­i­al to cre­ate a pre­cast wall sys­tem that could meet these strin­gent shield­ing requirements.

The team designed tem­po­rary hotel­ing for sci­en­tists and engi­neers which is dis­trib­uted through­out the facil­i­ty. A promi­nent fea­ture on the façade is an artic­u­lat­ed skin that reflects the prag­ma­tism of the cam­pus by manip­u­lat­ing light, views, and reflec­tiv­i­ty while pay­ing homage to the research within. 

Etched con­crete, glass, cor­ru­gat­ed met­al, and an undu­lat­ing sun­screen work to announce their research and cre­ate inte­ri­or envi­ron­ments that fos­ter innovation.

The build­ing achieved a LEED Gold rat­ing and is designed to be Net Zero Ener­gy Ready (NZER), incor­po­rat­ing ener­gy fea­tures iden­ti­fied in the Net Zero Ener­gy Build­ings Roadmap pre­pared by the Nation­al Renew­able Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NREL).

Client: Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA) John H. Glenn Research Cen­ter at Lewis Field
Pro­gram: Research lab­o­ra­to­ry and office space 
Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion: LEED Gold, Net Zero Ener­gy Ready
Size: 55,000 sqft 
Cost: $42,000,000

Select­ed Awards/​Honors
The Archi­tec­t’s News­pa­per Best of Prac­tice Mid­west 2024

Project Fea­tures
The Architect’s News­pa­per—​“Ross Bar­ney Archi­tects is Rec­og­nized as the Architect’s News­pa­per Best of Prac­tice in the Mid­west 2024”
Dezeen—​“Ross Bar­ney Archi­tects enclos­es NASA test­ing facil­i­ty in unique cop­per-con­crete pan­els”
Archi­tec­tur­al Record—​“Sus­tain­abil­i­ty in Prac­tice: NASA’s Hyper-Func­tion­al Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry Achieves a Bal­ance Between Form and Effi­cien­cy“
NASA—New Aero­space Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Facil­i­ty Enables Ambi­tious NASA Missions“New Aero­space Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Facil­i­ty Enables Ambi­tious NASA Missions”

Col­lab­o­ra­tive Part­ners: 
APTIM (Safe­ty Con­sul­tant)
dbHMS (Mechan­i­cal, Elec­tri­cal, Plumb­ing, Fire Pro­tec­tion Engi­neer)
Envi­ron­men­tal Design Group (Civil/​Envi­ron­men­tal Engi­neer and Sur­vey­or)
Field Man­age­ment Ser­vices (RFI/EMI Mit­i­ga­tion Design­er)
Guide­post Solu­tions (Secu­ri­ty Con­sul­tant)
HERA Lab­o­ra­to­ry Plan­ners (Lab­o­ra­to­ry Plan­ner)
Ter­ra­con (Geot­ech­ni­cal Engi­neer)
The Con­cord Group (Cost Esti­ma­tion) 
Thorn­ton Tomaset­ti (Struc­tur­al Engi­neer)
Thorn­ton Tomaset­ti-Wei­dlinger Pro­tec­tive Design (Pro­tec­tive Design)
Thresh­old Acoustics (Acousti­cal Design­er)
Wave­guide Con­sult­ing (Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Engineer)

Pho­tog­ra­phy Cred­it: © Kendall McCaugh­er­ty, Hall+Merrick