Perforated metal is entering into a new Renaissance. For many years, perforated metal was an industrial product, used for long-term filtration, grating, and other less artistic methods. In 2005, a major transition began to occur with the way perforated metal was manufactured. The de Young Museum in San Francisco made history by being the first project to use custom imagery converted into algorithmically placed perforations on the surface of a building.
Since then, Zahner has completed many hundreds of projects using custom perforated metal, and developed many technologies along the way. The image-to-metal system was patented, serving as part of the ZIRA Technology and most recently used on the image-to-perforation app, ImageWall.