Fazlur Khan (1929 - 1982) was a Bangladeshi-American structural engineer and architect widely regarded as the father of tubular design for high-rise buildings. [1] Working at the Chicago firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he devised structural systems that treated a skyscraper as a hollow tube, allowing towers to rise higher while using far less material. [2] His methods underpinned landmark buildings such as the John Hancock Center and the Sears Tower, and they remain fundamental to tall-building engineering today. [1]
Early life and education
Fazlur Rahman Khan was born on 3 April 1929 in Dhaka, then part of British India. [1] He completed his early schooling in the city and earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering at the engineering college in Dhaka that later became the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. [3] A Fulbright Scholarship enabled him to continue his studies in the United States at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned master's degrees and a doctorate in structural engineering. [1]
Career and structural innovations
Khan joined the architecture and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in Chicago, where he spent the core of his career and became a partner. [2] His central insight was that a tall building could be designed as a rigid hollow tube that resists wind and gravity through its exterior, rather than relying only on an internal skeleton of columns and beams. [1] From this idea he developed a family of related systems—the framed tube, the trussed or braced tube, and the bundled tube—each suited to different heights and shapes. [2] These approaches dramatically reduced the amount of steel needed, making very tall towers structurally efficient and economically viable.
Major works
The 100-story John Hancock Center in Chicago, completed in 1969, expressed Khan's trussed-tube concept through the dramatic diagonal bracing visible on its facade. [1] The Sears Tower, finished in 1973, used his bundled-tube system, in which nine framed tubes are grouped together and terminate at different heights; on completion it became the tallest building in the world and held that distinction for more than two decades. [1] Khan was also an early champion of computer-aided design, using emerging computational tools to model and refine complex structures. [2]
Later life and death
Beyond his built work, Khan taught and lectured widely and remained closely engaged with the affairs of his homeland, supporting relief efforts during the events surrounding the independence of Bangladesh. [3] He died of a heart attack on 27 March 1982 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, at the age of 52. [1]
Legacy
Khan is remembered as one of the most influential structural engineers of the twentieth century, and his tube systems continue to inform the design of supertall towers around the world. [2] He received numerous honors, including an honorary doctorate from ETH Zürich, and was posthumously awarded Bangladesh's Independence Award. [3] Institutions and awards in structural engineering have been named in his memory, and a sculpture honoring him stands at the base of the tower now known as the Willis Tower. [1]
