‘Factory’ is no longer a dirty word to cities
Nanotronics is a science and technology company that manufactures real things, not just ideas.
Think of factories and you tend to think of mass and mess: crowds of people doing low-paid work amidst noise and pollution. Nanotronics is the opposite: There are only a handful of people around and everything is neat and tidy — and pin-drop quite (except, presumably, when the Steinway is played).
Nanotronics specializes in applying AI to the manufacturing process in order to eliminate defects and reduce waste. The company designs and produces machines that can detect miniscule variations in products and processes. This means that it depends on having researchers and technicians working side by side. It also produces what it calls “Cubefabs,” modular chip manufacturing facilities that Nanotronics then ships around the world. “We like to build things in city centers,” says Williams.
Building 20 is part of a back-to-the-future move for the Brooklyn Navy Yard — a 300-acre stretch of Brooklyn’s waterfront with a panoramic view of New York’s harbor and lower Manhattan. Starting during the Civil War, the Navy Yard designed and manufactured ships for the US Navy. (That giant iron beam in Nanotronics’ building came from one of the first iron-clad ships). At its height during the Second World War, the yard employed some 70,000 people. By the 1970s, however, it had shrunk into a mere shell of its former self with 200 employees and the infrastructure decaying. Today it hums again: The yard is home to more than 450 businesses, many
