Articles

Discover the Sustainable Characteristics of Metal

The growing importance of the consideration and use of sustainable materials depends on the relationship between the renewability of the natural resources and the material products that are generated from them. Renewable resources are considered to belong to the natural environment and are replaced by the natural processes that occur in that environment as part of an ecosystem. Non-renewable resources are natural resources that occur only in a fixed amount or are used up faster than nature can create and replenish them over geological time spans. The risk of depleting a natural resource can make their use less desirable when other, more sustainable, alternatives exist.

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Exploring Architecture — and Zahner Projects — in Movies

Architecture doesn't just frame a story, it tells one. For filmmakers, buildings are characters. For architects, films are a kind of immortality — their work preserved on screen, recontextualized by narrative, seen by millions who may never visit the real thing. Films like Metropolis (1927) with its fabricated, futuristic city-scape took inspiration from the architectural drawings of Antonio Sant’Elia. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater inspired Alfred Hitchcock to design an elaborate set in Wright’s style for his film North by Northwest (1959). Zahner has had a front-row seat to this intersection, with projects appearing in feature films from DC Comics blockbusters to Silicon Valley thrillers. Here's a look at how two of them made it to the big screen.

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Zahner Headquarters Expansion Inspires Collaboration

While worldwide demand for exceptional metal art and architecture is increasing, our headquarters has been feeling too small for our growing creative staff. Engineers from sales, research and development, product development, planning, advanced fabrication, and other disciplines are now collaborating in over 17,000 square feet of expansive space designed to encourage interactions inside while piquing the interest of those outside looking in.

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Efficient Fabrication of Double Curved Surfaces

The Zahner R&D team recently wrapped a productively spent summer. Intern Elena Vazquez, a Master of Architecture candidate and Fulbright Scholar from Penn State University, joined the team for 10 weeks to conduct research on how to efficiently manufacture double curved metal surfaces. With the uptick in demand for gracefully curving architectural forms, R&D lead engineer and researcher, James Coleman, challenged Vazquez to discover a novel and cost-effective way of fabricating the designs our clients develop.

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Passive Security in Architecture

The necessity of security is so intertwined in the history of the built environment that it may go back to the roots of why we want to build in the first place. From the age-old castle typology to the earliest hill-forts, architecture has served to secure and protect since its humble beginnings.

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