Tower at PNC Plaza with PPG Coatings Earns Architectural Award

 

 

The Tower at PNC Plaza in Pittsburgh, which features an innovative double-skin façade fabricated with Coraflon Sunstorm powder coatings from PPG, has earned Architect magazine’s 2016 R+D Award for High-Performance Building.

 

The double-skin façade, one of the first of its kind in North America, combines with two vertical thermal shafts and a solar chimney to naturally ventilate the 33-story skyscraper without electricity or fan power for 42 percent of the year. As a result, the Tower at PNC Plaza, which opened Oct. 1, 2015, is expected to consume up to 50-percent less temperature-control-related energy than comparable buildings of its size.

 

The inner and outer curtain walls incorporate metal framing finished with PPG's Coraflon Sunstorm fluoropolymer powder coating in "mica gray". Coraflon Sunstorm powder coatings meet or exceed American Architectural Manufacturers Association (AAMA) 2605 specifications, the industry’s most rigorous standard for weathering, corrosion and chemical resistance, color and gloss retention, and other criteria. They are formulated without solvents and emit virtually no volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

 

Editors for Architect magazine wrote that jurors for the 2016 R+D Awards were most impressed by the design and functionality of the double-wall façade.

 

“You see a lot of these buildings where they just slap on a double-skin that acts as a buffer,” says juror Mic Patterson, LEED AP BD+C, vice president of strategic development, Enclos. “This double façade is integrated totally into the whole building energy and ventilation system.”

 

For more information about Coraflon Sunstorm powder coatings, and the PPG CFP Certified Fabricator Program and PPG CAP Certified Applicator Program groups, visit ppgideascapes.com or call 1-888-PPG-IDEA (774-4332).