PITTSBURGH – PPG Industries announced that SUNGATE^® passive low-emissivity (low-e) glass, STARPHIRE ULTRA-CLEAR™ glass and CORAFLON^® powder coatings were used on The Tower at PNC Plaza, which opened October 1 in Pittsburgh and is designed to be the world’s greenest office building.

The 33-story skyscraper features an innovative double-skin façade, one of the first of its kind in North America, that is designed to help the building naturally ventilate for more than 40 percent of the year. The inner and outer curtain walls incorporate metal panels finished with Coraflon fluoropolymer powder coating in Gray Mica and Sungate and STARPHIRE^® glasses laminated or fabricated into dual insulating glass units (IGUs).

Combined with Starphire glass in a standard one-inch IGU, Sungate glass has visible light transmittance (VLT) of 80 percent, along with a solar-heat-gain coefficient (SHGC) of 0.68 and a winter nighttime U-value of 0.28. Sungate glass is engineered to maximize the environmental performance of buildings in northern climates by harvesting solar heat in the winter to diminish furnace loads and by emitting high levels of daylight year-round to reduce lighting costs.

With their solvent-free, ultra-low-VOC formulations, Coraflon fluoropolymer powder coatings promote sustainable design while providing hard, durable UV-resistant surfaces that retain color and gloss for decades.

The two-layer façade for The Tower at PNC Plaza is equipped with a motorized outer layer and a manually operable inner layer of louvers that draw fresh air across building floors, where it warms, rises through two shafts in the building’s core and exhausts through the roof. Narrow floor plates and highly transparent Starphire and Sungate glasses enable light to penetrate 92 percent of workspaces throughout the building.

Coraflon powder coatings were applied by Sapa Extrusions America, a member of the PPG CAP CERTIFIED APPLICATOR PROGRAM^® (PPG/CAP) group.