Natural ventilation- another way to make your buildings breathe

The Tower at PNC Plaza is a 32- story office building. The design of this building set a new standard for sustainable skyscrapers, devising an innovative, low-energy strategy to heat and cool the building. From its one-of-a-kind, breathable double skin to its innovative workplace strategy, the LEED® Platinum-certified tower drives building performance to new levels.

For a building to inhale, it must effectively exhale. To complete the cycle, the double-skin façade works in tandem with a solar chimney located throughout and at the top of the building. Instead of turning sunlight into energy with photovoltaics (an inherently inefficient process), the building’s roof harnesses the sun’s abundant rays and captures them as heat. This heat inside the solar chimney acts as a magnet for the cooler air entering through the exterior façade, gently pulling the passive flow of fresh air across the floorplate, into the building core and upward to the top of the building where it disperses.