Cerner Headquarters

Signage for Cerner Headquarters Vision Center Forum Portals

The Cerner Corporation World Headquarters is designed by Gould Evans and features Zahner-manfufactured signage systems. Zahner produced this uniquely perforated stainless steel sculpture and sign for the Cerner Corporation in North Kansas City.

Two sculptural navigational displays were built: a small corner entrance sign adjacent to the building’s main entrance, and a large signage system visible from the nearby highway. This larger sign features an illuminated Cerner logo mounted on the perforated stainless steel screen wall.

Each of the displays were fabricated by Zahner using ZIRA, a patented technology developed by Zahner creating perforated imagery. The architects and client designed a non-repeating pattern of 1’s and 0’s, binary code in a non-repeating pattern. Zahner developed a process to rapidly punch the numbers using multiple dies.

The larger of the two displays, visible from the end of 210 Highway in North Kansas City, was produced with lighting systems embedded in the aluminum and stainless steel framework. Pictured above and below are photos of the signage at night, and during the day. As cars drive by, it appears to flash and animate due to the lights parallactic relationship with the perforations.

The complete system for the 61′ long sign structure comprises 72 panels supported vertically by stainless steel structural fins of varying depth and shape. Each panel is constructed from 18-gauge stainless steel, with a perforation pattern generated from a random sequence of binary code.

The display closest to the building features a DNA strand within the sign, visible as an orange tube. The structure was built with 1/4″ aluminum fins, attached to square tubes which create the sign’s profile. The face of the fins were installed with 14 gauge Angel Hair Stainless steel panels.

Fabricating the Cerner Signs

The sculptural sign was custom perforated from stainless steel plates using binary code to create the pattern. The surface is an array of 1’s and 0’s randomly placed across the plates of stainless steel.

Below are photos from the Zahner shop in Kansas City, where the material for each display was formed. Each panel was perforated using dies custom-made for the project. Together with the automated punches allowed the fabricators on the shop floor to quickly assemble components after being produced on the computer-controlled punch.