Owner

Sports & Exhibition Authority of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County

Architects

Rafael Vinoly Architects, New York
Burt Hill Kosar Rittleman Associates, Pittsburgh

PPG Products

PPG DURANAR® Coatings
PPG PURE PERFORMANCE® Paint

Project Overview

The David L. Lawrence Convention Center opened in Pittsburgh in 2003 as the world’s first certified green convention center. Today, it remains one of the largest LEED® Gold-certified buildings in the world.

Encompassing more than 1.5 million square feet of exhibit and meeting space, the building is a foremost example of an architect integrating the full spectrum of PPG architectural coatings and paints into a single building. 

In this instance, the primary goal of the architect was to create an environmentally advanced structure that would repay its energy investment in less than 10 years. The building features a number of energy saving features, including a cooling plant that runs on water drawn from an underground aquifer; natural cross ventilation created by river currents collected by the center’s swooping roofline; and a gray water system that recycles half the center’s water, saving an estimated 6.5 million gallons of water a year.

Duranar coatings have provided the David L. Lawrence Convention Center with a more sustainable and durable solution for its metal roof and wall panels.

Unconventional Coatings

Used inside and outside, PPG coatings and paints were instrumental to the environmental performance of the building. On the exterior metal building panels and skylights, various shades of PPG DURANAR® coatings provide extended durability, which reduced the need for repainting and other kinds of maintenance.

Trusted for over 50 years as a corrosion-inhibitive primer and fluoropolymer topcoat, Duranar delivers outstanding aesthetics and durability to metal roof and wall panels, and the David L. Lawrence Convention Center is no exception. Duranar coil coating systems meet or exceed FGIA/AAMA 2605 weathering performance requirements and feature PPG-proprietary resin and pigment technologies with 70% fluoropolymer base resins. This industry leading coating delivers proven resistance to color fading, acid rain, ultraviolet rays, chipping and peeling.

Indoors, zero- and low-emitting paints and coatings such as Pittsburgh Paints’ Pure Performance® paint reduce exposure to airborne toxins while helping to create an attractive meeting and convention environment.

A large percentage of materials used to construct the building, including those from PPG, were manufactured with recycled content and within a 500-mile radius of Pittsburgh.