Nanotronics Smart Factory

Mass timber went high tech to turn this historic, Civil War-era warehouse into a ‘smart’ manufacturing facility and headquarters. Over the years, the building, which dates to 1865, had been used to manufacture everything from armor plating for wooden warships to parts for hydrogen fuel cell submarines. Today, it’s used to develop advanced industrial microscopes and optical inspection systems capable of working on a nanometer scale. The design team left the shell of the original building intact, retaining the building’s existing columns and roof trusses, and added four stacked pods inside—formed with CLT walls, floors, and lids. The mass timber pod structures, assembled in just 28 days, serve as enclosures for the various fabrication activities within, and are connected by CLT bridges in the double-height spaces. The innovative decision to construct the CLT pods within the existing structure solved the challenge of creating enclosed workspaces—some of which need to be airtight, soundproof, and climate-controlled—without impeding the flow of collaborative spaces or compromising the beauty of the long, narrow building.