S | Zahner

Académie Lafayette

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We couldn’t have asked for a better collaboration or end result. Zahner took something complex and made it easy.

Jonathon KemnitizerIDSA.

Académie Lafayette Playground

Académie Lafayette Playground is a KEM Studio-designed playspace for students which features a slide manufactured and donated by Zahner. Académie Lafayette is a French immersion public school operating on multiple campuses in Kansas City serving grades K-8.

To maximize the school’s budget, the forms of the playground were designed to be easily built by volunteers and found/recycled objects + donations were utilized (phase one). Through fundraising and a successful crowdfunding campaign the slide/tunnel/climbing wall was completed as a second phase in Fall 2013.

Académie Lafayette students enjoy the new slide in Kansas City.

Installers add plywood ribs to the Zahner-manufactured structure.

Children at Académie Lafayette play underneath the slide made by Zahner.

Designer's rendering of the new playground at Academie Lafayette.

Sun Pavilion

September 22, 2017/in Art & Sculpture Public Art El Paso--Texas RDG Red, Silver S 2017 /by cmorris

Sun Pavilion, Artwork in El Paso, Texas

David Dahlquist and Matt Niebuhr with RDG Dahlquist Art Studio designed Sun Pavilion, a public artwork commissioned by the Museum of Cultural Affairs for the City of El Paso, Texas. Zahner provided engineering and custom art fabrication for the artist’s design.

Zahner fabricated the cut aluminum plates in shapes inspired by paper cutting craft traditions of the area. The face of each metal plate is painted silver while red paint covers the verso. Lit within, the structure resembles a paper lantern in the evening, inviting continued use of the space.

Detail of Sun Pavilion roof during installation.

Framing a place to gather, the Sun Pavilion provides sheltered space for park goers to share the stories of the day with each other. This public art project reinforces the role of regional parks as civic anchors and places of community gathering and cohesion and with imagination, the patterned shadows and colors echo faces of the past and put us together in the present with each other creating a special place, a distinctive place, for Blackie Chesher Park and the community.

Angel Gate

June 10, 2017/in Art & Sculpture, Interior Architecture Private Art, Worship Center Kansas City L. William Zahner Brown, Gold S 2003 /by cmorris

Angel Gate at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception

Angel Gate is a bronze and aluminum art feature which was manufactured at the Zahner facility in Kansas City. Commissioned by The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, the bespoke metal artwork provides a functional gate entry into an inner worship space.

The artwork is made up of stacked plates of aluminum and bronze. To increase the contrast between the two metal components, Zahner created a stepped layout between each metal plate. This provided a bolder feel for the light gateway. The use of bronze accentuates the gold-gilded capitals of the two Corinthian columns in the doorway, visually integrating the gate with the church’s original late 19th century design and context.

Related Project

Queen Anne’s Lace

Zahner worked with Dierk Van Keppel whose studio at Rock Cottage Glass created the glass inlay for the artwork. The metal component of the piece was made in aluminum at the Zahner facility in Kansas City. The aluminum surface is processed with a GB-60 finish, providing a muted reflectivity.

Ornate gate design by Zahner for The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

The interior metal gate open in the church's interior.

The gate closed at The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

Detail of the Angel Gate at The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

Hamptons Beach House

March 21, 2017/in Exterior Architecture, Interior Architecture Passive Security, Residential Hamptons--New York Aamodt/Plumb Grey S 2013 /by cmorris

Hamptons Beach House Residence on Long Island, New York

Hamptons Beach House is private residence designed by Aamodt / Plumb which features a protective aluminum plate screen facade fabricated by Zahner. The residence is located on a narrow barrier island on the south shore of Long Island, an hour and a half from Manhattan.

The property is exposed to Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Shinnecock Bay on the other. Extreme coastal weather conditions meant that the design had to reconcile the desire to openly experience the landscape with a real need for protection.

The solution was to create a tough exterior shell with an open, light-filled interior. Intricate shadow patterns, created by water-jet cut metal screens, move through the house as the day unfolds. More than ornament, the screens protect double height windows from hurricane force winds.

Hamptons Beach House residence designed by Aamodt / Plumb

Ridges Residence

February 22, 2017/in Interior Architecture Residential Las Vegas--Nevada Make Studios Nathan Weber Black, Blue-grey S 2016 Related Work /by cmorris

The Ridges Residence in Las Vegas, Nevada

The Ridges Residence is a private home featuring Zahner-manufactured interior metal artwork designed by Make Studios. Located in The Ridges, a neighborhood of Las Vegas, the project includes a carbon-steel perforated wall art feature which Zahner provided as a supply-only to Make Studios.

Working collaboratively with Zahner’s ImageWall team, the designers and artists at Make Studios worked with Blue Heron to develop a “Carbon Canvas” concept, showcasing artistic imagery through perforated metal. The owner of the residence had a fondness for the city of Pittsburgh, so the artwork shows a aerial view of the city’s downtown area. The artwork is manufactured in a designer-specified alloy of hot-rolled steel, a material long associated with the Pennsylvania city.

The carbon-steel alloy was manufactured by Zahner using ImageWall. The custom perforated steel surface was then delivered and installed by Make Studios, and coated in tung oil. The artwork is recessed in the living room and kitchen area of the interior residential project.

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Ridges Residence

Interior view of the Ridges Residence artwall.

Turbulence House

February 1, 2017/in Exterior Architecture Residential Abiquiu--New Mexico, Vicenza--Italy Steven Holl Architects White S 2002, 2005 /by cmorris

An Artistic Guesthouse

Designed by Steven Holl Architects and manufactured using Zahner form-building technologies, Turbulence House functions as a guest home for artists Richard Tuttle and Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge.

Steven Holl likens the design to “the tip of an iceberg indicating a much larger mass below. The form allows turbulent wind to blow through its center.” The stressed skin and aluminum rib construction was digitally prefabricated in Kansas City and assembled on site in Abiquiu, New Mexico.

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Turbulence House

Building the Curved Form

The architect initially provided Zahner with a small-scale physical model. Using 3D scanning capabilities, the team developed a digital model in CAD system Pro Engineer. (Today, the company uses a more sophisticated 3DEXPERIENCE platform.)

Zahner engineers used this model to refine the form into ZEPPS assemblies, the Zahner system for building sculptural forms. Typically, the ZEPPS system exists as a secondary structure to a structural steel primary support. For Turbulence House, the ZEPPS assemblies serve as the primary structure, which required additional engineering for full integration.

A total of 31 pre-fabricated metal assemblies, each with a unique shape, form the “shell” of the house. Galvalume, an alloy of zinc and aluminum, was used to create the building skin.

A second version of Turbulence House was installed indoors during an exhibition at the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza, Italy. It is now permanently displayed on the grounds of a private company in northeastern Italy.

Steven Holl watercolor painting of the Turbulence House.

Physical model by Steven Holl Architects for the Turbulence House.

3D Model of the scanned physical model for Turbulence House.

ZEPPS conversion of the model, color-coded into individual ZEPPS assemblies.

Turbulence House with partial cladding installed.

A section of the ZEPPS is lifted into the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza, Italy.

Washington Elementary School in Sacramento

Washington Elementary School in Sacramento features a number of unique metal elements manufactured by Zahner using ImageWall for custom perforated metal. Working for Landmark Construction with the designers at HMC Architects, Zahner provided the screens with custom perforated imagery on stainless steel and pre-weathered steel. These screen elements were used to provide passive security and signage while expressing the school’s creativity, science, and technology — marking a new shift towards practicing the STEAM curriculum (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics).

To establish this new shift in education, Sacramento City Unified School District partnered with city leaders and Principal Dr. Gema Godina-Martinez to envision the transformative shift and redesign of Washington Elementary School. The school pursued a STEAM academic program, becoming a magnet for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math education.

HMC Architects was challenged to redesign classrooms and collaborative learning areas not only to support student-centered learning, but to also influence the culture of the school’s educational experience. The project had a tight schedule. This transformation needed to be completed in less than a year to meet the Fall 2016 grand re-opening.

North entrance with perforated images of

North entrance for Washington Elementary School in Sacramento.

When HMC Architects developed the gate design for Washington Elementary, one of the considerations dictating the design decisions was how to provide security for the elementary school students. The project team employed passive security design measures by developing an open-air security gate which would ensure student’s safety while also promoting a playful STEAM atmosphere.

The architects came up with a creative security solution: the picture perforation pattern is more open at children’s height, while densely perforated at adult heights of 4′ to 6′ — ensuring that young students have greater visibility while adults will have greater difficulty seeing into the open air school commons.

Passive Security in Architecture

If you're designing a building for security, it's important to think about how your design's defenses can be met sustainably — and to also consider how these measures can be achieved without antagonizing its inhabitants.