Curved curtain wall fronts gold-certified hockey arena

The basics:The Consol Energy Center, the new home to the Pittsburgh Penguins, is the first arena in the National Hockey League to receive the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification, according to a release from Kawneer Co., Norcross, Ga. The six-level, 735,000-square-foot arena features a prominent curving west-facing façade of high-performance glass that allows natural daylight into an open atrium space. "It's not an intense amount of light, but the natural daylight in that area provided us the opportunity to not have that many [artificial] lights in the atrium space," says Jason Carmello, architect, Populous. "The glass is a very large volume. It creates views, and allows the sun to come in during the afternoon and early evening."

The players: Architects, Populous, Kansas City, Mo., Astorino, Pittsburgh; construction managers, PJ Dick Inc., Pittsburgh, and Hunt Construction Group, Scottsdale, Ariz.; project management firm, Icon Venue Group, Greenwood Village, Colo.; framing supplier, Kawneer Co., Norcross, Ga.; glass supplier, PPG Industries, Pittsburgh; glazing contractor, Universal Glass and Metals Inc., Detroit; glazing subcontractor, framing installer, D-M Products Inc., Bethel Park, Pa.

The glass and systems: Kawneer's 1600 Wall System 1 curtain wall was used along the entire downtown-facing façade with 1-inch insulating glass, Solarban Z50, solar control low-emissivity glass. The arena also features Kawneer's Trifab VersaGlaze 451T framing, with an IsoLock thermal break. For the interior, Kawneer supplied its 500 Heavy Wall Entrances. The portion of the curtain wall that encloses the offices features Kawneer 1600 sunshades with a 30-inch projection.

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