Why Meta is building its high-tech South Carolina data center with an old-school material

In a greenfield industrial park in rural Aiken County, South Carolina, Meta is building a new $800 million data center that’s much like any of the other hyperscale data centers giant tech companies are scrambling to construct. Set on 300 acres with two massive data halls making up most of its 715,000 square feet of buildings, it’s the kind of gargantuan facility that has become the de facto built form of the race to harness the lucrative power of artificial intelligence. But past the sprawling data hall buildings, a comparably modest administration building has a unique design feature. Instead of the concrete and steel used in the data halls and countless other data centers around the world, the facility’s administration building is being made primarily of wood. [Photo: Meta] A grid of honey-toned glulam mass timber beams and columns rise out of the dirt on site, and more wood tops the structure that’s currently under construction. When the data center becomes o