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News & Updates

The Steven Spielberg-produced documentary Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero features Snøhetta's September 11th Memorial Museum, stainless steel cladding by Zahner.

Announcing the Zahner-KME joint venture for the European Market. Read the Press Release at the JV site. Zahner-KME in Joint Venture

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The Zahner App is now available for iPhone. Features hundreds of projects by artists and architects. iPhone App

Zahner Campus North Dock Expansion has won the Monsters of Design Honor Award; designed by Crawford Architects' Stephen Colin and Michael O'Donnell.

The North American Copper Awards has recognized Zahner's copper metal-work for the Waipolu Gallery in Oahu, Hawaii.

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Announcing the winners for the Biennial ZAHNER + KCAI Art and Sculpture Competition at KCAI.

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Tessellate™ kinetic metal surfaces by Zahner and ABI released: visually stunning and environmentally responsible.

Bill Zahner named an Honorary Member of the American Institute of Architects.

Introducing the Hands of the Artist™ division, where Zahner engineers and craftsmen produce projects for artists.
Visit Zahner's Hands of the Artist website

400 Fifth Avenue

The Setai at 400 Fifth Avenue

Located at the Southwest corner of 400 Fifth Avenue, the new high-rise is only a couple blocks away from the iconic Empire State Building. The new building is designed by Gwathmey Siegel in joint venture with Schuman, Lichtenstein, Claman & Efron.

At the top of the 650ft. structure is a crown, engineered and produced by Zahner using one our most powerful systems: The ZEPPS™ Process. Originally engineered for the production of complex curved structures, the process has now been adapted as a tool for producing facades in complex situations, such as the top of a skyscraper.

The client wanted to reduce the length of the install time, as well as provide the safest and most cost-effective solution for the completion of the crown. Since the ZEPPS™ Panels are pre-engineered, it reduces both the amount of subcontractors on the job and the amount the time that traditional construction methods would take.

The panels of this crown were surfaced with our Angel Hair™ Stainless steel, a surface that Zahner produces in-house. The surface reduces glare as compared with a #4 finish on the material.

The surface also included a MetaBump™ surface pattern on the metal, as pictured above on the mockup at the Zahner Facility. This serves to prevent the stainless steel from pillowing or oil-canning, as well as to further reduce the glare and add a glint of texture to the surface when seen from afar.


Photo of 400 Fifth, next to Empire State Building

Detail of single ZEPP™ Mockup Panel

Photo of 400 Fifth at sunset.

CAD Rendering of single ZEPPS™ Panel
 

Why the ZEPPS™ Process?

The ZEPPS™ Process is typically used to efficiently construct complex forms and surfaces, such as the undulating curvatures by Frank Gehry or Randall Stout, but 400 Fifth Avenue is one of the few projects where ZEPPS™ was used to construct a rectilinear form.

Using the ZEPPS™ Process eliminated three typical construction steps -- structural steel contractors, load bearing steel stud erectors, and finish surface contractors. Because of the way that these panels are pre-assembled, we reduced the potential danger for on-site workers by decreasing their time spent constructing it, lowering the amount of workers involved on the structure, and eliminating the need to have workers out on a swing-stage several hundred feet in the air.

Instead, the crown was pre-fabricated in our Kansas City shop, shipped via freight-truck, and hoisted to the top of the tower, where workers bolted each of the forty panels in a matter of days.

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