Zahner Design Technology Director to teach course seminar at KU

Jonathan Asher, Director of Design Technology at A. Zahner Company will tap into his expertise to teach a course Parametric Modeling – Tall Buildings for students of University of Kansas School of Architecture.

The course will focus on the iterative nature of design, using parametric modeling tools to facilitate the non-linear development process of complex tall buildings. Using Digital Project, the powerful parametric Building Information Modeling (BIM) software developed by Frank Gehry and his design technology consultancy Gehry Technologies, the students will develop a digital architectural model of a tall building that incorporates the information needed to document the building in 2D drawings and as a physical model.

Asher received his MArch from the University of Pennsylvania. After working at Point b Design in Philadelphia, he moved to Vienna, Austria and worked as a Computational Design Specialist at the acclaimed office Coop Himmelb(l)au, where he worked on a number of award-winning projects, including the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (image below). As the Director of Design Technology, Asher oversees the early design and development phases of new projects.

This seminar will cover all aspects of 3D parametric modeling: surface modeling, intelligent generative building components, automation and scripting; as well as many other features of a robust Digital Project BIM, including: cost / budget management, 4D construction simulations with Microsoft Project, and clash detection.

Zahner University

The Zahner team is privileged to work with many brilliant minds in architectural industry. Through this process, Zahner developed many powerful design technologies, as well as innovating the manufacturing process for a range of unique building typologies.

Zahner encourages employees to bring their knowledge to the next generation of future architects, engineers, and designers, by engaging in local university programs. In the spring 2015 school year, three Zahner employees are overseeing courses as part of the Zahner Institute program. In addition to Asher’s course on designing skyscrapers that can be manufactured, as well as a course on robotics taught by project engineers Craig Long and Andrew Manto.

Previous Courses

Prior to Asher’s position at Zahner, he provided a similar couse at University of Applied Arts in Vienna alongside esteemed designers Greg Lynn, Hani Rashid, and Zaha Hadid.

Asher is currently nearing the end of a course he’s teaching on parametric modeling, the result of which will be a manufactured chair by the students of Kansas University Architecture program. Late next month one of the student teams’ designs will be selected to be manufactured and fabricated by Zahner.