Research Support Facility by Frank Ooms, courtesy of RNL Design

The Research Support Facility of Golden, Colorado is evidence that sustainable design can be applied to the office building as well. When plans for the 200,000-square-foot headquarters of the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory were drawn, it made sense to make use of emerging energy technologies, given the federal organization’s own research and development mission. Therefore, the architects at RNL incorporated solar collectors into the building’s design and a thermal labyrinth for heat storage with the goal of producing the country’s largest energy net-zero structure.