Frank Gehry Horse Head Conference Room at Princeton University

Zahner worked for long-time partner Frank Gehry to construct the original “horse head” sculpture and conference room, which now is on display at Princeton University.

Sheets of lead were hammer-formed over a plywood structure which encases a semi-private meeting space for students at Princeton University, pictured below. This was the first use of the horse motif by Frank Gehry. He would later produce a nearly identical form for the DG Bank building in Berlin nearly twice the size. 

World-Architects’ John Hill profiled the sculpture at Princeton University in 2015, and discussed some of the history of the project. 

“Yet Gehry did not design the sculptural “horse’s head” piece for Princeton, or as a conference room. It was to be a small part of a huge 22,000-square-foot (2,044-sm) residence for Peter B. Lewis in Lyndhurst, Ohio, but after ten years of numerous iterations the project was cancelled. Luckily a mockup, framed in wood and covered in lead, found a second life in the Icahn Lab, providing a suitable contrast to Rafael Viñoly’s curved glass wall and two-story atrium.”

— John Hill, World Architects