KC’s Zahner Co. treads the cutting edge with leading artists and architects at home and abroad.
On a Sunday morning in early May, a helicopter gently removed the eastern-most and largest of the four Sky Stations atop Bartle Hall. Damaged by lightning, the nearly 40,000-pound sculpture was trucked to Zahner Co. for repairs.
That destination made perfect sense: Zahner Co. is the Kansas City firm that worked with artist R.M. Fischer to produce the $1.2 million public sculpture, which was installed in 1994. Since then, the stainless steel and aluminum structures have become iconic symbols of Kansas City; reinstallation of the repaired sculpture is expected to occur in September.
“It looks bigger than I remember 20 years ago,” said Bill Zahner, president and CEO. “It’s my favorite of them all because it’s so massive, so intricate. It’s engineering and art.”
Operating out of a headquarters and plant in urban-core east Kansas City, the Zahner Co. is recognized throughout the world for its contributions to metal art, architecture and engineering.
A 2004 New York Times story cited Zahner as “a company whose name is in the Rolodex of every European architect with American aspirations.”
Norwegian artist Ole Lislerud toured Zahner during a March visit to Kansas City for the conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. In a recent email, he lauded the firm’s “innovative approach to combining materials and new technology.”
“Zahner has become a world-renowned company and an international household name among artists and architects,” Lislerud said. “They are continually on the cutting edge of contemporary architecture.”
That kind of recognition — in America and abroad — is stoking growth at Zahner Co. The firm currently employs 205 people in Kansas City and about 30 in Dallas. It expects to add 50 employees in Kansas City over the next year, and perhaps an additional 10 to 20 in Dallas.
But Zahner said growth is not the primary aim of his firm, which generates revenues of $40 million to $50 million a year. “Our mission is to exceed our customers’ expectations.”
Working with Artists
Many of those customers are artists. They have included such local, national and international names as John Baldessari, Nick Cave, Laura DeAngelis, Frida Escobedo, R.M. Fischer, Jan Hendrix, Donald Judd, Larry Kirkland, Dylan Mortimer, Jason Pollen, Jesse Small, Dierk Van Keppel and Sol LeWitt.
For about 10 years, the Dutch-born Hendrix has collaborated with Zahner Co. on projects such as the Art Wall at Doha, in Qatar. Completed in 2010, the Art Wall was fashioned from hundreds of massive waterjet-cut and painted aluminum panels and includes a 40-foot-high tower in a central courtyard. The pattern cut into the panels replicates drawings by Hendrix, and the engineering and production work was performed by Zahner Co. in Kansas City.
“Art and engineering go together because an artist builds things as well,” Hendrix said.
Hendrix likened the work atmosphere at Zahner Co. to “being at Harry Potter’s school, in this sort of wonderland, candy store. There are so many options and possibilities. You have to be really careful to pick out the one that you can work with. If I pick it out on my own, I’ll probably pick out the wrong one. If we pick it out together, we’ll probably pick out the right one.”
Zahner said “one of the biggest things with Zahner is we’re pursuing knowledge, information about what we work with and the ability to interact with people like Jan. We want to show them what can be done with the materials and the knowledge that we have.”
The World Looks to a Kansas City Company
Zahner Co.’s headquarters and local operating facilities, at 1400 E. 9th St., stand in a neighborhood that has been working to come back from years of blight.
From the street, the Zahner Co. complex is easily recognizable by its distinctive exterior wall composed of curved metal panels. Inside, the ambience conveys a mixture of factory, art studio and engineering works. Examples of advanced technology include a yellow robot arm that controls precision welding.
Projects that Zahner has made its imprint on include the de Young Museum in San Francisco; the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago; the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C.; the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada; the Liverpool Department Store in Mexico City; Basra Stadium in Basra, Iraq; Sidra Medical Center in Doha, Qatar; and the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York.
World-renowned architects the Zahner Co. has worked with include Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Stephen Holl, Daniel Libeskind and Thom Mayne.
[block pos=”right”] “An artist, an architect might come to us with an idea, a concept. And we work with them on how to make that happen, how to make it work, how to make it real.”
—Bill Zahner, president and CEO Zahner Co. [/block]
Zahner said working with his company helps architects design projects that stand out.
“The most fun is when an architect comes in here looking for ideas. And he sits with us and we start looking at things, understand what he’s trying to achieve, and then work together to achieve it. That’s where we can excel. That’s where we become, in a sense, their research and development arm. We are able to bring a cutting-edge technology coupled with the virtuosity of a work force that is very passionate about doing the best possible work for our clients.”
The company also plays a significant role at the Kansas City Art Institute, where Bill Zahner has served as chairman of the board of trustees. Zahner Co. donates the design support, fabrication, and installation of the sculptures for the institute’s biannual fundraiser and auction. The sculpture is auctioned off to the highest bidder, and all auction proceeds are donated to the institute’s scholarship fund.
From Cornices to Cutting-edge Architecture
Zahner Co.’s roots extend back to Andrew Zahner, Bill Zahner’s great-grandfather, who ran a small business called Eagle Cornice Works in Joplin, Mo., in the late 1800s. Andrew Zahner provided custom architectural metal cornices to many surrounding towns in southern Missouri and eastern Kansas. In 1897, Andrew Zahner moved his business to Kansas City, where he founded the Zahner Co.
Bill Zahner has forged a reputation as an expert in architectural metals and has authored two books on the subject.
“It works best here if you’re always working to discover,” Zahner says. “It could be how something is manufactured, how a finish is produced. A lot of it is, how do we explore different ways of doing things? An artist, an architect might come to us with an idea, a concept. And we work with them on how to make that happen, how to make it work, how to make it real.”
For example, Hendrix brings his designs to the Zahner Co., which then performs the engineering and fabrication for Hendrix’s clients. The scope of the work includes exploring the interaction of materials and what kinds of materials work best. “Today we’re looking at different ways of producing a fairly large wall section that’s curved,” Zahner said. “We’re trying to work out the material processes, costs, budgeting, schedule — those types of things. We’re working with him (Hendrix) on the Mexican Museum in San Francisco. It’s a beautiful project that will be done some time in 2018.”
A Reflection of the Community
There is a growing consensus around the country that a city’s art reveals much more than art, and Meg Zahner, wife of Bill Zahner and president of Zahner Co.’s Metalabs affiliate, wholeheartedly agrees.
“My perspective is that a city’s art collection is a reflection of the health and wealth of that community,” she said. “We think it’s very important that communities recognize the value of their collections, and how people perceive those communities when they come to visit and they see the art. If it is fantastic looking and it’s well cared for, then it’s a reflection of the economic health of the community in which the art lives.”
Bill Zahner added that “we’ve always enjoyed supporting the arts in the area. It’s the fabric of a community. I’ve worked with the engineering world and worked with the architectural world, but art is the outward thinking that stretches the limitations. It makes the world a little more interesting place to be.”
