Green | Zahner

Harold Washington Library

Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago, Illinois

Rising amidst the iconic buildings of Chicago, the Harold Washington Library stands 10 stories high and has been noted as one of the largest libraries in the United States. The architects responsible for the building, Hammond, Beeby and Babka are known for producing designs which employ modernism with historical allusion, often described as belonging to the postmodern movement of design.

Zahner’s involvement on the project was in regards to the architectural forms and building cornices designed by artists Kent Bloomer and Raymond Kaskey. These works form the iconic figurehead of the building, a modern take on the gargoyle iconography and the flourishes of baroque sculptures in patinated copper tones. However, the sculptures produced were actually manufactured using contemporary materials, plates of aluminum, riveted and finished with a polyester finish in the traditional verdigris tone.

The aluminum leaf forms and steel cornice railing are each powder coated with a green-toned polyester finish. Zahner provided the larger forms of these acroterion, using a foam placeholder for the smaller sculptures welded to these artworks. The animal sculptures were produced by the artist studio, and attached by Zahner.

Harold Washington Library photographed in 2015, twenty-five years after manufacturing.

Architectural forms for Harold Washington Library in the Zahner shop.

A shipment of the cornices for Harold Washington Library leaves the Zahner shop.

The aluminum cornices for the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, Illinois.

A foam placeholder stands in for the cast owl acroterion sculpture prior to installation.

A single panel of the Harold Library cornices at the painter.

Hands of Man

August 15, 2016/in Art & Sculpture Public Art, Sculpture Kansas City L. William Zahner Blue, Green S 2006 /by cmorris

Hands of Man, Public Artwork

Hands of Man is an artwork by L. William Zahner, made as a gift to The Salvation Army in Kansas City. The artwork was produced by tracing the hands of Salvation Army employees. These hands drawings were scanned and cut in copper, using Zahner’s art fabrication facility.

After using machinery to cut-out the several hundred copper hands, these parts were hammered into the individual shapes to give them form and texture. The hands were then welded and sculpted to form a large-scale sculpture of a hand.

Zahner then used patination techniques to give the surface a mottled Star Blue patina on the surface of the metal before having the sculpture delivered to the Salvation Army Headquarters, based only a few blocks from the Zahner Campus.

The Hands of Man sculpture is a good example of how an artist can use Zahner public art fabrication service to build sculpture. Art services provided by Zahner will help assist artists to engineer, fabricate, deliver, and install public art.

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.

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… 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.

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.

Clyde Frazier NYC

August 15, 2016/in Interior Architecture Restaurant New York City Morphosis Black, Blue, Blue-grey, Brown, Charcoal, Gold, Green, Grey, Indigo, Light blue, Magenta, Orange, Red, Silver, Violet, White, Yellow M 2012 /by cmorris

Clyde Frazier’s Wine & Dine in New York City

Clyde Frazier’s Wine & Dine is a new construction high-end sports bar and eatery designed by Morphosis. The space features a Zahner-manufactured ceiling, made using generative design and automated fabrication.

Designed by Morphosis for NBA Champion and former New York Knicks Player Walt Clyde Frazier, this New York City restaurant expands a full city block in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. A swarm of suit jackets dominates the central corridor of Clyde Frazier’s Wine and Dine, a 10,000 square foot experience which mixes American and Asian cuisines.

Zahner provided the ceiling architectural feature. This ceiling is made up of custom cut and folded aluminum plates, 544 in total. The aluminum plates are printed from photographs of Mr. Frazier’s suit jackets. These parts are segmented into six unique shapes, where are placed at intervals of increasing distance. This interval placement creates the illusion that every part is unique.

Clyde Frazier's Wine & Dine in New York City.

The colors in the model categorize the panels according to breaks and sizes. Between the differing anchor placements, prints, panel sizes, and panel shapes, all 544 aluminum panels ended up being unique.

Even more complex were the ribs which held them in place. Because the panels were anchored at different angles, every drill hole had to be custom placed. Thus, each of the 69 ribs had 6 segments for a total of 463 segments, each with 3 unique faces.

3D model for Clyde Frazier's Wine and Dine.

“The transformative feature in the room, however, is suspended from the ceiling, where a 170-foot-long assemblage of colorful, patterned, flat and folded aluminum fins floats over the dining area, bar, and lounge. Morphosis found the stripes, plaids, and prints for this polychromatic sculptural reef in Frazier’s closets.

The architects photographed their contents and, working with Zahner’s metal fabricators, digitally printed images for a film adhesive applied to 544 aluminum panels of six shapes. The palette varies from blue to brown-gold to charcoal, with red painted undersides enhancing the gestalt. ‘It’s mesmerizing,’ says Frazier.” — Suzanne Stephens, Architectural Record.

Five threaded rods support each rib. The central columns do not hold the weight of the panels.

Aluminum fabricated-metal forms with custom printed and mounted graphics.

Installation process at Clyde Frazier's Wine and Dine

Installation of the printed aluminum fabrications.

SUNY New Paltz

August 15, 2016/in Exterior Architecture Education New Paltz--New York ikon.5 architects Blue, Green M 2010 /by cmorris

SUNY Campus Commons at New Paltz

The State University of New York (SUNY) Campus Commons addition in New Paltz is a centerpiece for the school’s audacious program. Designed by ikon.5 architects, the glass and metal ‘crystalline palisade’ was ‘grown’ on the plinth of an existing concrete building. The new construction is designed for LEED Silver certification, incorporating radiant heating and cooling, photo-optic lighting controls, and substantial natural day lighting and views.

The muted turquoise surface is made using a pure copper alloy, preweathered and patinated (the process of developing a patina on metal) using a proprietary process developed by Zahner. The process results in an insoluble protective patina on the copper panel’s surface, variegated and eccentric.

The patinated copper surface was chosen by the architects because of the color’s association to nature and how it complements the glass shard. Zahner provided the sheets to local fabricators to create the flat-lock seam. The architects were already working with a manufacturer to fabricate the metal panel system, so the Zahner team supplied pre-patinated flat copper sheet and had a local team produce the panel system.

The ikon.5 architects-designed SUNY New Paltz Student Union Building

Interior view of the Star Blue™ copper panels at SUNY New Paltz Student Union Building

Star Blue™ copper panels at SUNY New Paltz Student Union Building

Detail of the Star Blue™ copper panels at SUNY New Paltz Student Union Building

Creating an Architectural Identity

The new design references the surrounding landscape of the Hudson River Valley and the Catskills. The building’s form was inspired by the nearby Shawangunk palisade, and its jade hue influenced by the Wallkill River’s muted blues.

The building also takes notes from the surrounding campus architecture. While the expanded student center stands in stark contrast to the neutral-toned concrete and brick buildings nearby, its angled roof continues the upward trajectory of an adjacent building’s ascending staircase. This attention to the building’s immediate context gives the new construction an integrated appeal, all-the-while maintaining its contemporary aesthetics.

The new building’s design has become a symbol for SUNY New Paltz, whose logo now incorporates the glass and metal pyramid. The exposed and triangulated framing underneath the glass zigzags across its fractal silhouette. Reflecting this exposed framing is the outdoor seating with its contemporary wireframe where students can enjoy the fresh air and sun while studying.

Photograph of the Shawangunk palisade alongside painting by ikon.5 architects

The building’s profile matches the upward accent of the original building’s staircase

PHOTO © A. ZAHNER COMPANY.

Detail of the exterior glass facade of SUNY New Paltz

Copper and glass facade of SUNY New Paltz

Detail of the copper and glass facade of SUNY New Paltz

Starlight Theater

October 21, 2010/in Art & Sculpture, Exterior Architecture, Interior Architecture, Landscape Architecture Historic, Performance Center Kansas City Gastinger Walker Harden Blue, Brown, Green, Red L 2000 /by cmorris

Starlight Theatre and Stagehouse in Kansas City

Zahner has been involved in a range of scopes for the Starlight Theatre in Kansas City, ranging from the roof and cupola turrets, as well as the Donor’s Circle completed with artist Dierk Van Keppel.

Starlight Theatre has a rich history, which dates back to 1925, when a Romanian Queen visited Kansas City. The city’s Federation of Music worked to bring a musical showcase which raised nearly ten thousand dollars, which began the movement for an outdoor theatre space. In 1951, construction was completed.

Building the Stagehouse for Starlight Theatre

In the late 1990s, they theatre company recognized a need to fortify For the Theatre’s centennial, a new building was completed to improve that quality of productions which could be performed at Starlight. In 2000, Zahner was responsible for manufacturing the new roof system for the amphitheater. Named the Jeannette and Jerome Cohen Community Stage, the new stage also included a roof for Starlight theatre, and increased its technical capability, making it one of the largest roadhouses in the country.

Starlight Theatre in Kansas City.

Photo courtesy of America’s Roof.

Photos of Starlight Theatre during construction.

Photo A. Zahner Company.

In addition to producing their own shows, Starlight began presenting major national tours in 2000 so they could bring more recent and contemporary Broadway musicals to Kansas City as well as share their productions with indoor theaters around the country. This increased production versatility has continued to make Starlight Theatre a summer favorite for residents and visitors alike.

Detail of the metal ceiling system made for the Starlight Theatre Donor's Circle

Related Project

Starlight Donor’s Circle

Zahner engineers and artisans worked with Gastinger Walker Harden, with Bob Rohlf and the Starlight Theatre Association of Kansas City to engineer, fabricate, and install the artwork. The surface features glass cast by local Kansas City artist Dierk Van Keppel.

Zahner manufactured the roof, cupolas, and turret towers in raw unpatinated copper, also known as “red copper”. This material quickly went from the golden-orange tones above into a warm darker tone. This material will continue to patina, and one day develop into a green verdigris patina on the building’s roof.