Pacific Park Plaza is a 30-story residential building in Emeryville, California and located adjacent to San Francisco Bay and Interstate 580. Standing at 318 ft tall, Pacific Park Plaza is the tallest building in Emeryville, and the tallest in the San Francisco Bay Area outside of San Francisco and Oakland. The building's 580 units are a mix of one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. The building was completed in 1984 using an Exterior Insulation and Finish System (EIFS) for cladding. Immediately after completion, the building cladding developed water infiltration issues at both the horizontal and vertical panel joint lines. In particular, the facades facing San Francisco Bay which experienced strong wind driven rain had the most water infiltration into the interior.
The scope was to explore re-cladding options to solve these water infiltration issues. A cream-colored porcelain metal panel cladding system was selected for its durability, water resistance and self-cleaning characteristics. All the existing building facades, windows and storefronts remained in place, and the new metal panel cladding was installed over of the existing facade. The new panels extended to the window frames. The panels were designed in small enough sections so that they could fit in the building freight elevator and brought up to the roof level. From there, construction workers used the building maintenance powered platform to install the panels at all the levels below.
