Museum | Zahner

Guggenheim Hermitage Museum

August 15, 2016/in Art & Sculpture, Interior Architecture Museum Las Vegas--Nevada OMA, REX Architecture Brown M 2002 /by cmorris

The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas

The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum was designed by Rem Koolhaus and Joshua Prince-Ramus of OMA as a center for Impressionist Art.

Zahner developed a preweathered patina on weathering steel for the gallery walls. The materials was used to create five-thousand square feet of wall space for the historic artworks. This preweathered steel material was used throughout the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum.

Today the weathering steel material is known as Solanum Steel, and uses a steel alloy which has replaced COR-Ten in popular usage. Many areas of the gallery were clad in this material, and served as a unique tone to back the acclaimed artworks of the nineteenth century.

Related Surface

Guggenheim Hermitage Museum

Three of the walls clad in Zahner’s Solanum Steel were engineered to rotate, allowing curators to change the size and proportion of the four intermediary spaces within seconds. The wood floor and ceiling were produced using a finished maple surface.

A museum installer places a custom-magnet wall connection to hang a painting.

The Solanum Steel surface is a durable steel surface whose iron content enables magnetic properties. For this reason, the gallery opted for magnetic connections to the artworks, which meant that artworks could be easily installed and de-installed with minimal effort and clean-up. All of the paintings were hung from custom-made magnets, able to withstand several hundred pounds of vertical load.

The museum closed its doors in 2008 and was re-opened as an automobile museum. Zahner has since worked with OMA and REX (Ramus) on projects such as the Wyly Theatre in Dallas.

Freedom Center

August 15, 2016/in Exterior Architecture Museum Cincinnati--Ohio Blackburn Architects, Bora Architects Brown L 2004 /by cmorris

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

A new copper and stone building rises in downtown Cincinnati, an icon in its own right in the midst of other grand architectural works such as Libeskind’s Ascent at Roebling’s Bridge and Zaha Hadid’s Rosenthal Center.

The Freedom Center features copper flat seam wall panels and associated flashings. The material was installed as raw copper panels and allowed to age naturally. This authentic process meant that the bright red copper quickly developed a dark reddish-brown patina, which will mature into its final form of light blues and greens. The museum is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Museum, which means that the Freedom Center has access to the immense stored collection of The Smithsonian.

The architectural team for the Freedom Center was designed by BORA with Blackburn Architects. Design of the new building began in 1998, broke ground in 2002, and was completed in 2004.

Related Surface

Freedom Center

Upward view of the Freedom Center copper panels which have patinated to a dark red-brown.

Detail of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

Photograph of the curving paths which cut through Freedom Center.

The location of the project is just north of the Ohio river, a significant location noted by Brian Libby in the Metropolis Mag:

‘When escaped slaves made their way north to freedom along the Underground Railroad, the Ohio River was a place to celebrate a bit before continuing on. Ohio law banned slavery, but superseding federal law allowed whites to re-capture slaves that had crossed the river and return them to Southern slave owners. As a result, most slaves using the Railroad continued further north.’

The notion of continuing on can be seen in the design of the building, as curving paths cut through the north/south axis of the building, further emphasizing the continued movement for freedom and social rights.

Copper panels will continue to weather at Freedom Center.

installation of raw copper panels at Freedom Center.

Resources and Press

“It takes courage to place a monument to racial harmony and diversity at the doorstep to your city. We had the nerve to do that.” — New York Times, Bruce Webber, August 01, 2004.

“One of my big concerns was that we’d be overshadowed by the stadiums,” says Freedom Center CEO Ed Rigaut. “But the museum really stands tall. I’ve even heard a few people comment that, in a way, we dwarf the stadiums.” — Metropolis Magazine, October 1, 2004.

”I see a museum not as a place that limits our vision, but one that enhances our vision. Museums have traditionally not taken a transformative role, but that’s changing. The Freedom Center, like our museum, can ask itself, ‘Why did we build this?’ Not just to look back, but to shape a different present and future.” — Cincinnati Enquirer, Krista Ramsey, August 1, 2004.

”It’s a learning center whose high-tech, interactive displays allow visitors to witness ongoing struggles for freedom worldwide.” — Town & Country, Annette Weisman, November, 2004.

Festival of Arts

August 15, 2016/in Exterior Architecture Museum, Performance Center Laguna Beach--California, Los Angeles--California Bauer Architects Brown, Red, Violet M 2015 /by cmorris

Festival of Arts and Pageant of the Masters, Laguna Beach

Combining both natural and built elements from the surrounding environment, the Festival of Arts renovations link both the City of Laguna Beach with its surrounding canyon landscape. Zahner’s scope consisted of fabricating a series of five stand-alone wall sections, the tallest of which rises to nearly 20’. These act as both a decorative feature wall and a place-holder for signage regarding various events and exhibitions.

The existing concrete signage wall was demolished as part of the proposed renovation. Bauer Architects sought to reimagine the wall as art. They started with the image of tree branches, a link to the forested setting using the words of the philosopher Seneca, “All art is but an imitation of nature”.

For the perforations, a standard circular punch shape was used to create imagery of trees on the form’s copper surface. These shapes were then cut from the metal using a punch. When assembled in unison, the panels read as an entire image. To create additional texture and add rigidity to the panels, a series of embossed and debossed bumps were applied to the surface.

Related Surface

Festival of Arts

Growing a Stable Patina on Architectural Copper

The architects wanted to use a natural material with an aged look. Zahner’s Dirty Penny patinated copper was selected as the base material. This oxidized copper material was developed by Zahner to expedite the natural weathering process of copper. Rather than taking years to develop a rich, dark patina, the Dirty Penny process results in a stable patinated surface using a rapid chemical-based treatment. The panels for Festival of Arts were pre-patinated and shipped directly to the jobsite for installation.

The unsealed patinated panels will continue to age with time. The metal’s surface acts as a living protective barrier, similar to the way moss grows on stone. Unlike paint or anodization, which will deteriorate with time, the custom copper patina will continue to grow stronger as the surface oxidizes.

Manufacturing Accurately-Curved Architectural Forms

Creating the curvature for the panels proved to be a unique challenge. Some of the walls were derived from a single radius, while other sections included more than one radius in a single wall. All of these were tangent to one another. Due to the embossed and debossed bump pattern, the usual method of processing the entire sheet through a roll former could not be used. This compression would damage the bumps. Zahner’s solution was to crimp roll the top and bottom legs of each panel.

Crimp rolling the edges gave the sheets a gentle curve, but the process is not entirely precise. So to increase precision, Zahner also created a series of aluminum templates at the desired radius. Zahner was able to match the copper panels to the aluminum templates during the crimping process, resulting in a highly accurate architectural form.

The resulting geometry matches identically to the each of the radii provided in the architect’s model.

Simplifying the Concealed Attachments

Copper rolled angles were used as attachment hardware on the backs of each panel and fastened to existing mullions. In order to fit the curvature, these angles were also stretched to the appropriate radius. Coordination of fasteners to the copper rolled angles became key.

To disguise fasteners, Zahner assisted with coordinating the location for a series of aluminum “hats” on the mullions. Each piece of hat hardware lines up with a perforated hole. Fasteners were run through the perforations, to the back hardware. This allows for panels to be removed with ease, so that signage could be easily installed, and maintenance remains uncomplicated.

Designing concealed hardware is one of the advantages of using Zahner’s engineering and design team for projects like this. Contact Zahner to see what kinds of assistance we can provide for your project, or learn about how you can get your team started early with Zahner using Design Assist.

MoPop Museum

August 15, 2016/in Exterior Architecture Museum Seattle--Washington Frank Gehry Partners, LMN Architects Gold, Light blue, Red, Silver, Violet, White XL 2000 /by cmorris

Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP)

Jimi Hendrix inspired the name, Frank Gehry designed the project, and Zahner produced the stunning curvilinear forms and structure. Residing in the shadow of the Seattle Space Needle, the Experience Music Project (now the Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP) was completed in 2000.

Gehry’s unique design required a creative approach to engineering and fabrication. The Museum was one of the first projects to use ZEPPS, the Zahner technology for producing curvilinear and complex structures. The process resulted in 3,300 unique structural assemblies clad in 21,000 metal sheets — for a total surface area of more than 140,000 square feet of curving metal. No two sheets and no two panel assemblies are the same.

Surface techniques are similarly varied, and include Angel Hair stainless steel, red interference-coated stainless steel and fluorocarbon-coated aluminum.

“

The most complex exterior skin ever devised for a building.

Civil Engineering MagazineSteve M. Huey.

Constructing the Building Envelope

Working with Gehry’s design, the Zahner team developed a process for reducing curves into large, pre-fabricated assemblies which could then be easily shipped and rapidly installed. Thus, the Zahner Engineered Profiled Panel System (ZEPPS) came into being.

At its core, the ZEPPS process consists of an aluminum support structure, clad in a layer of sheet metal. A final metal layer (of the designer’s selection) completes the assembly and is usually installed onsite. The ZEPPS process efficiently produces complex forms with minimal waste, reducing a building’s ecological footprint.

Since the EMP Museum’s completion, the ZEPPS system has undergone several iterations, growing more powerful, accurate, and refined. The process continues to be the preferred method for manufacturing sculptural form.

de Young Museum

August 15, 2016/in Exterior Architecture, Interior Architecture Museum San Francisco Bay Fong & Chan Architects, Herzog & de Meuron Brown, Gold, Green, Red XL 2005 /by cmorris

M. H. de Young Memorial Museum

Named for San Francisco newspaperman M. H. de Young, this building is a completely reworked redesign from the original museum, which opened in 1895 as an outgrowth of the California International Exposition of 1894. After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 which completely ravaged the original building’s structure, the de Young board began working to fund a restructuring of the building, and the resulting winner of the competition for its redesign in the late 1990’s was acclaimed Swiss architects, Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron.

Herzog & de Meuron developed the idea of a variably perforated screen exterior which would mirror the green foliage and forestry of the surrounding Golden Gate Park, San Francisco’s central park. The architects worked with Zahner whose engineers and software specialists developed a system which would allow unique perforation and patterned dimples, variably sized and placed throughout the exterior. This included near 8000 unique facade panels — the collective whole which formed patterns of light as seen through trees. This was the first iteration of the Zahner Interpretive Relational Algorithmic Process, or the ZIRA Process.

“

Craftsmanship in large buildings is supposed to be dead, killed by Modernist ideology and cost considerations. What this building says is that maybe craftsmanship has a high-tech future after all.

Time MagazineNone.

Aerial view of the de Young Museum in San Francisco, California

Aerial view of the de Young Museum roof.

Inverted Seam roof system and channel design for the de Young Museum roof

Outdoor cafe under the de Young Museum canopy awning

At the time, this mosaic algorithmic process was emerging, but was undeveloped in the use of perforated and embossed metal. Zahner assembled a team of software developers and engineers to assist in this technological advancement.

The architects came up with a photo taken pointed up through the trees, and in several parts of the museum, light filters through the perforated system of holes, revealing shadows similar in shape and form to those of actual trees. ZIRA technology was developed to streamline this complex series of variable holes in the copper, allowing engineers to run chosen imagery through the algorithmic system, translating it to the thousands of copper plates.

Source imagery and installed panel system for the ‘Children’s Entry’ at the de Young Museum.

Above left, the surface of the ‘Children’s Entry’ was created using imagery from a photograph provided by the architects (right). The vantage point looks up into a sky obscured by trees. Similarly, the section of the Museum featuring this surface was initially open, recreating the effect on metal. Since installation, the area has been covered for moisture control.

“

… A sensual copper skin that will evolve over time.

Sarah Amelarauthor, Architectural Record..

Architects originally called for a light golden-hued appearance for the Museum. However, as the intentions evolved, a desire for the Museum to blend and emerge from its forested surroundings like an ancient indigenous structure.

De Young Museum cover feature in Architectural Record

The November, 2005 issue of "Architectural Record" magazine has placed the New de Young Museum on their cover and, in a section devoted to museum projects around the world [pages 104—115].

Patina transition over time on the de Young Museum

Zahner helped to guide this decision for the client. Understanding how copper alloys weather over time, and understanding the integrity and durability of the material is key to its selection process. Zahner brought the clients into the fold of this knowledge, educating the design team on how over the next few decades, the copper facade and roof would transition from its bright golden red, to a dark brown, to a black, and finally, after a decade or more, it will slowly emerge into earthy greens.

In clean air environments — which San Francisco generally has great air quality — this process can take much longer. Copper oxidizes quickly in polluted areas. In cleaner environments, this process could take twenty to thirty years.

The following information is a snapshot of the building statistics:

Area of copper panels on the building: 129,900 square feet of copper panels.
Area of copper on the roof cladding: 55,500 square feet of copper panels and 6,500 linear feet of custom battens.
Area of copper on the tower: 33,218 square feet of copper panels.
Number of panels — Main building: 5,757; Roof: 3,513; Tower: 1,845.
Number of perforations — Building: 920,699; Tower: 803,229
There are approximately 1,500,000 bumps of the surface. This includes the four levels of bumps that go in and four levels that come out. These bumps, along with the flat plane, results in nine different levels of surface texture.
Pounds of copper utilized. . .1,121,992. This translates too. . .2,201 cubic feet or 1 sheet of copper that is 1 meter wide by 21.6 miles long.
The 70,000 pounds of the custom alloy, custom bronze extrusions utilized for the tower system were also designed and engineered by Zahner.

Daeyang Gallery

August 15, 2016/in Exterior Architecture Museum, Residential Asia, International, Seoul--South Korea E.Rae Architects, Steven Holl Architects Red M 2011 /by cmorris

WRNS Studio is an architecture and planning firm that provides sustainable design for education, healthcare, transportation, civic and urban mixed-use. The award-winning firm is recognized nationally, and is based in San Francisco with offices in New York City and Honolulu.

The firm has developed a growing number of works with Zahner, starting with the the Studio Libeskind-designed Contemporary Jewish Museum in which WRNS served as Architect of Record. Since then, Zahner has worked with WRNS on a number of projects, develop their unique design concepts into custom architectural systems, featured below.

Daeyang Gallery and House

Designed by Steven Holl Architects with architect of record E.Rae Architects of Seoul, this unique structure serves dual purposes, as both a residential guest house as well as an art gallery for visitors. JongSeo Lee of Steven Holl Architects was the associate in charge, and the project was completed in 2011.

The structure’s geometry is inspired by a John Cage sketch for a music score by the composer Istvan Anhalt, ‘Symphony of Modules,’ which Cage illustrated in an abstract form. The unusual shaped composition has now been reimagined as the plan layout of the Daeyang residence, continuing the chain from music, to art, to architecture.

This state of continued change and process informs many aspects of the building. Zahner worked closely with both the owner and the design team to develop a custom patina for the copper panel system that would match the desired coloration with natural warmth and texture.

Related Surface

Daeyang Gallery

Because of the unique range of tones and the material’s rich aging process, copper holds a special significance in the hearts and minds of those at Zahner. The material’s tone and color is perpetually in a state of flux, changing with each location based on the temperature, moisture, and pollutants in its environment.

This constant state of change will add character and soul to the gallery’s surface. The custom deep red tone that was developed will likely darken over time, and eventually may even begin to green and blue. The difference between copper and other materials, is that this constant state of ‘corrosion’ is actually the process of forming a stunningly beautiful protective barrier which will outlast any sealer, paint, or protective coating.

View through the slats of the Daeyang Gallery entrance.

Architect's model of the Daeyang Gallery and House.

Front gates of the Daeyang Gallery and House.

Detail of the copper patina for the Daeyang Gallery and House.

Panoramic of the Daeyang Gallery and House during construction.

Bamboo form construction for Daeyang Gallery and House.

Copper wall panel for the Daeyang Gallery and House.

Daeyang Gallery and House during construction.

Installation of wall panel systems for Daeyang Gallery and House.

The custom panels were installed by local workers in Seoul, South Korea. Zahner supplied the pre-engineered panels which securely locked into the substructure. Photographs of the completed building can be viewed at Steven Holl Architects website.

Contemporary Jewish Museum

August 15, 2016/in Exterior Architecture Museum San Francisco Bay Studio Libeskind, WRNS Studio Blue L 2008 /by cmorris

The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco

Designed by Studio Daniel Libeskind with WRNS Studio, The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco features a facade and building envelope manufacture by Zahner. Originally founded in 1984 in San Francisco, California the museum’s mission was renovated with a new addition. The museum’s mission is to offer contemporary perspectives on Jewish culture, history, art, and ideas. The Museum reopened June 9, 2008.

3,028 sheets of blue iridescent cross-fire interference stainless steel clad the surface of the museum, which is formed in the shape modeled off of the Hebrew script for ‘L’Chaim’ which translates ‘To Life’.

Zahner was responsible for the design, engineering, fabrication, and installation of the facade and total building envelope, inclusive of the metal, glass, and substrate. The project uses the Inverted Seam roof and facade system, the most powerful roof and building envelope surface for water control, planar uniformity and long-term performance.

Zahner engineered the skylight windows to integrate into the Inverted Seam roof and building envelope system, inset with four-sided structural silicone glazing. The 36 custom skylights sit perfectly flush with the surface of the metal, giving the roof and siding a smooth, uniform facing.

Evening photograph of the Studio Daniel Libeskind-designed Contemporary Jewish Museum .

Cantilevered section of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

Daniel Libeskind examines the light reflectivity of one of Zahner's panels.

The metal panels of the Contemporary Jewish Museum at mid-day.

Blue metal panels of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco during construction.

At certain angles the metal panels reflect iridescent colors.

Aerial view of the blue metal panels on the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Franicsco.

Aerial view of the blue metal panels on the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

Detail of the blue panels on the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

The subtle raised edges on the surface of the metal are a custom touch designed by Libeskind. The architect was able to design a custom raised indentation with Zahner design consultants and fabricators using the custom indentations for automated alteration of the metal surface.

This is the first major project whose facade was produced by Zahner for Daniel Libeskind. Since then Zahner has completed the Libeskind-designed 18.36.54 private residence and summer home in Connecticut, and in 2014, Zahner provided art fabrication on his design for the Ohio Holocaust and Liberators Memorial.

Columbus Museum of Art

August 15, 2016/in Exterior Architecture, Interior Architecture LEED, Museum Columbus--Ohio DesignGroup Green M 2013 /by cmorris

Margaret M. Walter Wing at the Columbus Museum of Art

The new Margaret M. Walter Wing of the Columbus Museum of Art is a contemporary work of architecture featuring both interior and exterior custom-patinated copper sheets manufactured by Zahner.

In 2013, the Columbus Museum of Art’s Board of Trustees unanimously voted in favor of beginning construction on a new expansion project which would enable the Museum to bring global exhibitions to the residents of Columbus, Ohio. The museum reached out to DesignGroup principal Michael Bongiorno whose design team, including Keoni Fleming, Annie Neumer, and Joseph Mayer, developed a strategy for the museum’s expansion. The expansion’s centerpiece, the Margaret M. Walter Wing, adds 50,000 square feet to the total square footage of the Museum’s available gallery space, and is expected to reach a LEED Silver certification.

Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio.

Columbus Museum of Art, East facade, glass, and limestone.

Columbus Museum of Art, detail of the custom copper soffit.

Columbus Museum of Art, detail of the custom copper flashing and metalwork.

The architects worked with their client to develop a design which would pair the Museum’s rich history with its promising future. The designers achieved this balance in many ways, including aesthetics. The design of the building’s form is contemporary, featuring many modern architectural touches, while its surface is an antiqued copper, a rich material which would normally require decades of weathering to achieve.

Developing the Architectural Copper Panels with Custom Patina

Zahner has worked with patinated copper and copper-alloys since the company’s establishment in 1897, but it was only a recent advancement by Zahner’s research and development team that allowed the firm to match naturally aged copper.

Typically, architectural copper panels are installed as raw or ‘red’ copper sheets, and while this color will quickly morph from reflective reflective pinks and reds to a matte brown surface, it will still take another few decades before the metal fully patinates into the blues and greens.

An example of this slow patination process is the de Young Museum in California, which Zahner manufactured and installed in 2003-2005 as unpatinated copper panel system. Ten years later, the surface is now starting to show signs of green along the panel seams, but the overall tone is still a deep matte burnt umber tone. It is likely another ten to twenty years before the de Young will take on a green hue.

For the new CMA building, Zahner sped up the process. Zahner engineers manufactured pre-weathered custom blue-green copper using a rapid patina process. A process that normally takes twenty to thirty years was achieved in the span of a few weeks.

Zahner fabricated the building’s custom flashing and standing seam roof and supplied the pre-patinated copper sheets for the copper wall panels. Keith Panel Systems (KPS) engineered and fabricated the wall panels on their KPS System ‘A’ which provides a compartmentalized and pressure-equalized rainscreen. Phinney Industrial Roofing coordinated the work with KPS and successfully completed the installation as the sub-contractor to Corna Kokosing Construction.

Columbus Museum of Art, view from the main entrance.

Columbus Museum of Art, detail of the custom metalwork.

Chihuly Bridge of Glass

August 15, 2016/in Exterior Architecture, Landscape Architecture Bridge, Exhibit, Museum, Pedestrian Bridge Tacoma--Washington Andersson-Wise Architects Dale Chihuly Blue, Grey M 2002 /by cmorris

Chihuly Bridge at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington

The Chihuly Bridge is a destination feature for Tacoma, Washington. Designed by Andersson-Wise Architects as an addition to the Tacoma Museum of Glass, the project provides a pedestrian bridge to downtown Tacoma. Made possible by a donation from Jim and Carolyn Milgard, the bridge crosses over major rail lines and links the Museum of Glass to Union Station and the State History Museum.

Zahner served as both the sole contractor and manufacturer in the production of the Chihuly Bridge of Glass. This construction included all structural steel, glazing and cladding elements as well as fiber optics and vacuum HVAC system within the cases.

Related Project

Museum of Glass

Zahner produced the metalwork for the glass bridge as well as the massive cone which can be identified throughout the downtown area. The cone was manufactured in stainless steel diamond panel system which was attached to a ZEPPS structural framework, each made by Zahner.

The system that Zahner used for the glass encasement of the artworks is the Drop Lock glass installation system, which allows for easy installation and sustainable maintenance. The system builds on Zahner’s patented Inverted Seam system for creating co-planar metal facades and roofs. The assembled panels provide rapid installation, require no silicone, and result in a visually clean edge with a dry look.

Visitors who walk across the bridge get a closer look at the work of artist Dale Chihuly. The bridge is divided into three sections:

— Seaform Pavilion: a glass ceiling and canopy system showcasing 2,364 works of Chihuly glass from his Seaform and Persian series.
— Crystal Towers: a permanent art installation by Chihuly, rising 40 feet above the bridge deck and serve as beacons of light.
— Venetian Wall: an eighty-foot long installation displaying 109 sculptures from three of Chihuly’s series: Venetians, Ikebana, and Putti.

Venetian Wall for the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, with Museum of Glass in the background

Pedestrians cross the Chihuly Bridge of Glass

Venetian Wall at the Chihuly Bridge of Glass

Seaform Pavilion at the Chihuly Bridge of Glass

Chihuly Bridge Seaform Pavilion, designed by Andersson Wise

Zahner field construction crew delivers the Seaform Pavilion for the Chihuly Bridge of Glass

Zahner field construction crew installs the Seaform Pavilion for the Chihuly Bridge of Glass

Plaque for the Venetian Wall at the Chihuly Bridge of Glass

Chihuly Bridge designed by Andersson Wise.

Press

US Glass Magazine – Chihuly Connections: New Bridge Creates A Link to Museum of Glass.
ArchNewsNow – Chihuly Bridge of Glass By Arthur W. Andersson, AIA/Andersson-Wise Architects

Broad Art Museum

August 15, 2016/in Exterior Architecture Museum Lansing--Michigan Zaha Hadid Architects L 2012 /by cmorris

Eli & Edythe Broad art Museum in East Lansing

Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, The Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum resides on the campus of Michigan State University. Committed to exploring contemporary issues through international art, the Museum functions as an exhibition and community space.

Zaha Hadid Architects worked with Zahner to develop the pleated stainless steel facade, a complex use of metal requiring a high level of precision. The metal is finished in a non-directional, light diffusing surface technique called Angel Hair.

”We were able to achieve a highly refined stainless steel surface for the Broad Art Museum by scaling up technology that once was stuck in the confines of fine machinery or jewelry.“
— L. William Zahner

Related Project

Rosenthal Museum

These plates of blackened aluminum use a siding system which repels moisture. These were engineered to interlock in such a manner to control thermal movement without compromising the moisture deterrence requirements. This was important due to the installation on concrete, which breathes. The aluminum plate panel system features custom extruded hardware fastened using matching aluminum studs for a visually seamless system. This hardware is attached to the horizontal aluminum hat channel.

Design Assist & The Broad Art Museum

Zaha Hadid engaged Zahner in a Design Assist contract during early stages of design development. Due to the complexities of the intended design, both teams deemed it necessary to sufficiently pre-plan constructability, budget and scheduling.

The dynamic design of The Broad Art Museum necessitated re-thinking typical fabrication methodologies. Because every component of the façade is askew, traditional practices for creating square structures were not applicable. New machining processes were created to achieve the architect’s precise, accordion-like edges, which in many ways are more complex than curvilinear designs.

Part of the Design Assist process includes production of a to-scale mock-up. The prototype aids in identifying design and fabrication challenges, ensuring smoother and more directed shop and installation procedures.

”Because it’s all intersecting lines, it had to be even more precise than a curving facade. It might seem counterintuitive, but a facade like The Broad is actually more complex than most curvilinear facades.“
— Craig Long, Engineer