How timber from a WWII airship hangar became part of Google campuses

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In 1943, as World War II made materials like steel more scarce, the U.S. Navy turned to timber to construct airship hangars at Moffett Federal Airfield, located at what is now NASA Ames Research Center. The structures were built in just 208 days using Douglas fir, widely assumed to have been harvested from the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and became part of a strategic West Coast hub for blimp operations during the war.

In 2014, Planetary Ventures LLC, a subsidiary of Google, entered a long-term lease of the airfield and assumed management of the historic hangars. Though Hangar 3 stood for over 80 years, the structure was compromised by substantial engineering challenges. Ultimately, ongoing efforts to repair and preserve the historic structure could not prevent progressing damage, prompting the difficult decision to remove the now hazardous hangar.

A typical demolition would have routed this historic timber to the landfill, but Google's sustainability and real estate teams saw a different opportunity: salvaging the wood for reuse in modern buildings.

Salvaging 119,000 board feet of old growth lumber

Once engineering assessments confirmed Hangar 3 couldn't be preserved in its original form, the question became how best to remove the structure. Typical demolition wasn't an option: the wood within the structure had been exposed to a variety of chemicals, creating a high risk of contamination. So the 1,000-foot-long structure would have to be systematically dismantled.

Teams used high-reach excavators to surgically disassemble the hangar, salvaging approximately 119,000 board feet of the most structurally sound Douglas fir boards (roughly 178 tons of material).

Some of this salvaged wood - shipped back up to Spokane, Washington, for evaluation and remanufacturing - is now destined for a Google mass timber office prototype in the Dalles, Oregon. It's a homecoming of sorts: returning the wood to the regional timber economy from which it was likely harvested over eight decades ago.

Writing a new playbook

Reclaiming used lumber on such a large scale is often dismissed as unpredictable, labor-intensive and costly. Modern building codes assume builders are using freshly milled lumber, so there's no easy path to certify reclaimed wood.

In the absence of a roadmap, the Hangar 3 project team created their own. They consulted wood scientists, structural engineers and mass timber manufacturers to rigorously test the structural integrity of the salvaged timber.

After planing away the contaminated outer layers, testing yielded incredible news: the historic Douglas fir still possessed robust, predictable structural strength. In the end, approximately 66,000 board feet of the material successfully met the rigorous requirements for mass timber remanufacturing.

Viewing old buildings as material banks, not waste

Our Hangar 3 journey underscores the opportunity presented by deconstruction and reuse. It shows that if we can view our existing physical assets as "material banks" for future uses, then we can minimize the economic and environmental costs of purchasing new materials.

The lumber salvaged from Hangar 3 is now getting a new life in showcase installations across Google campuses in the Bay Area, California, and for mass timber construction at supporting office facilities on Google data center campuses.

Read more about the process in our new white paper.

• Sustainability