The SOLARBAN® glass brand debuted 50 years ago, and for the past four decades, the PPG Industries (NYSE:PPG) product has been selected for application on many prominent buildings that define the Dallas skyline.
Among the best-known examples is Bank of America Plaza and its iconic green silhouette. Known as Interfirst Plaza when it opened in 1984, the 72-story skyscraper was built with Solarban 560-8 TWINDOW® glass. Thirty years later, it remains the tallest building in the city and the third-tallest in Texas.
Solarban glass also is integral to Thanksgiving Tower, which opened as Dallas’s second-tallest building in 1983. Highlighted by its soaring reflective glass curtain wall, the 50-story building, now the city’s eighth-tallest, is distinguished by its “sawtooth” exterior, which was designed to create 16 corner offices on each floor.
A new generation of Solarban glass continues to redefine the Dallas skyline, most famously with the award-winning Omni Dallas Convention Center Hotel. Shimmering with Solarban z50 and Solarban PACIFICA® glasses, the 23-story hotel is the first building in Texas to earn LEED® certification for New Construction at the Gold level and the largest hotel outside Las Vegas to earn this distinction.
Other well-known Dallas buildings that are adorned with Solarban glass and have earned LEED certification include Providence Towers, Rosewood Court and 1400 Hi Line. Two Victory Park luxury condominium towers – The House by Starck and YOO and The Cirque – are also glazed with Solarban glass.
Introduced by PPG in 1964, Solarban glass heralded a new era of environmentally advanced glass by being one of the first coated glasses engineered to reflect heat away from buildings to reduce air-conditioning use. Today the Solarban brand encompasses a broad range of high-performing solar control, low-emissivity (low-e) glasses that transmit daylight, block solar heat and thereby reduce heating, cooling and lighting demands to help architects design and construct more sustainable buildings.