The Plastics Pipe Institute named San Francisco’s Pier 15 Exploratorium as the winner of its Project of the Year in the Building/Construction division.

The project showcases 200,000 ft of Uponor North America’s Wirsbo hePEX™ crosslinked polyethylene (PEX-a) tubing for the radiant heating and cooling system that uses the San Francisco Bay as a heat sink/heat source.

The project, designed by EHDD Architecture of San Francisco and engineered by Integral Group of Oakland, CA, renovated a century-old building on San Francisco’s Pier 15 into one of the largest net-zero energy and net-zero carbon museums in the United States. The 330,000-sq-ft, LEED®-Gold structure is projected to be 57% more efficient than the ASHRAE 90.1 energy standard requires, due in part to the Uponor radiant heating and cooling system.

“We are very proud to receive this recognition by our peers in the plastics pipe industry,” said Bill Gray, president of Uponor North America. “The Pier 15 Exploratorium is an excellent example of the benefits of flexible plastic pipe and how it can transform a historic building into an impressively sustainable project.”

This is the second time Uponor has won the PPI Project of the Year. In 2010, the Wormley Row restoration project featuring Uponor’s radiant floor heating system won Project of the Year in the Heating and Cooling category.