One PPG Place

The One PPG Place is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by Johnson/Burgee Architects, with Philip Johnson as lead architect, and built between 1981 and 1984 in Pittsburgh, PA.

Its precise street address is 101-125 Third Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA. You can also find it on the map here.

The One PPG Place is the central tower of a commercial complex consisting of six other buildings, including a winter garden, and a central courtyard.

The building's design blends Neogothic style with modern innovations, drawing inspiration from iconic structures like London's Victoria Tower, H.H. Richardson's Allegheny County Courthouse, and Charles Klauder's Cathedral of Learning, also in Pittsburgh.

At the time of its completion in 1984 the One PPG Place incorporated solutions that were quite advanced at the time, these included capturing heat generated by computers inside the offices, recycling it and redistributing it throughout the building.

Johnson/Burgee Architects, with Philip Johnson as the lead architect, was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the One PPG Place a reality:

• Robertson, Fowler & Associates P.C. in charge of Structural Engineering
• Mellon Stuart Construction and Blount Brothers Construction as the Main Contractor
• PPG Industries in charge of Facade Consultancy
• PPG Industries as the Main Developer
• Zion & Breen in charge of Landscape Architecture

The One PPG Place can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The One PPG Place was completed in 1984. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The One PPG Place was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The One PPG Place uses a frame structure made of steel columns and reinforced concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features dark reflective glass with silver-colored aluminum frames that create vertical and horizontal lines, structuring the glass panels and providing a geometric order that balances the ornamental Neo-Gothic forms with a modern and functional approach. The numerous extrusions of the facades extend into towers that crown the structure.