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Fazlur Rahman Khan
was born in 1929 in Bangladesh. After traveling to the U.S. in
1952, Khan earned two masters degrees in engineering and a PhD in
structural engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana in just
three short years.
Dr. Khan joined
the prestigious A&E firm, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and quickly rose
through the ranks, achieving Participating Associate status in 1961 and
Associate Partner status in 1966.
In response to the
cost premium for tall buildings in the 1960's that made skyscrapers
commercially impractical, Dr. Khan began working on a completely new
design concept. Earlier high rise buildings were designed using a
bulky "box-like" structure employing huge amounts of steel in the
structural framework to account for higher wind loads. Using
fundamental structural principles, Dr. Khan developed and implemented a
"tubular" design, which required considerably less steel to build than
earlier skyscrapers.
In 1964, the
43-story DeWitt-Chestnut Apartments were built in Chicago using Dr.
Khan's framed tube structure. This design employs structural
columns closely spaced around the perimeter of the building, rather than
scattered throughout the footprint, while stiff spandrel beams connect
the columns at every floor level.
Building on the
framed tube structural design, Dr. Kahn introduced the exceptionally
efficient "trussed-tube" structural system in the design of Chicago's
100-story John Hancock Center, completed in 1969. He then followed
with the world-record 110-story Sears Tower, which remains the tallest
building in the U.S.
Without the
ingenuity of Dr. Khan, the central business districts of countless
cities across the world might have turned out much different than the
massive "cities in the sky" that we have today. Dr. Kahn achieved
many honors during his lifetime, including earning the title of
"Construction's Man of the Year" in 1972 and election to the National
Academy of Engineering in 1973.
Dr. Khan passed
away in 1982 and was posthumously awarded the International Award of
Merit in Structural Engineering from the International Association for
Bridge and Structural Engineering and a Distinguished Service Award from
the AIA Chicago Chapter.
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