By David Jen
A new research park will shoot for the stars when it opens in Mountain View, California, as early as 2027.
San Francisco-based developer SKS Partners unveiled, in October, plans for the Berkeley Space Center, a 36-acre mixed-use development aimed at bringing academia, government, and industry together to “generate futuristic innovations in aviation, space exploration and how we live and work in space,” according to press material from the University of California, Berkeley, one of the project’s partners.
In addition to SKS and Berkeley, the project team includes global design, architecture, engineering, and planning firm HOK and landscape architecture firm Field Operations.
The NASA Ames Research Center will lease the land, which is in Santa Clara County in the San Francisco Bay Area, to Berkeley for the project.
"We believe that the research and the capabilities of a major university like Berkeley could be a significant addition to the work being done at Ames," says Eugene Tu, Ph.D, the center director at Ames.
The campus will offer 1.4 million sq ft of office and research and development space in addition to conference space, academic facilities, and retail amenities, according to HOK press material. Eighteen acres of open space will provide a central green area with outdoor working yards, while later project phases plan for short-term-stay facilities and student and faculty housing.
Project renderings show open lawns surrounded by clean, modern buildings about five stories tall, but HOK says it is too early to comment on building designs or the breakdown among residential, retail, office, research, and academic spaces.
The project will sit on the former Naval Air Station Moffett Field in Santa Clara County, California, which Ames acquired when the base was decommissioned in 1994. Now a research park, the space is home to some 25 companies as well as the largest wind tunnel in the world and Hangar One, a historic structure boasting one of the largest clear-span interior spaces in the United States.
"We're hoping to create an ecosystem where Berkeley talent can collaborate with the private sector and co-locate their research and development teams,” says Alexandre Bayen, Ph.D, a UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and associate provost for Moffett Field program development, in Berkeley press material. “And since we will be close to NASA talent and technology in the heart of Silicon Valley, we hope to leverage that to form future partnerships."
The joint venture will focus on launching breakthroughs in astronautics, quantum computing, climate studies, and the social sciences, according to HOK.
Claire Tomlin, Ph.D., professor and chair of electrical engineering and computer sciences at Berkeley, also sees potential for the project to spur developments in advanced air mobility — the family of aviation technologies that involve electrical vertical takeoff and landing vehicles with high levels of automation.
Moffett Field “offers an outdoor test bed for research on how to integrate drones or other unpiloted aerial vehicles, which are being used increasingly for aerial inspection or delivery of medical supplies, into our air traffic control system," says Tomlin. "I anticipate great collaborations on topics such as new algorithms in control theory, new methods in AI, new electronics, and new materials."
Construction is slated to begin in 2026 with some buildings possibly ready for move-in in 2027.
This article is published by Civil Engineering Online.
