description Fazlur Khan Overview
Fazlur Rahman Khan was a Bangladeshi-American structural engineer whose work helped establish tube systems for tall buildings. At Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he contributed to the structural designs of Chicago's John Hancock Center and the 110-story Sears Tower, completed in 1973. These projects connect his engineering ideas to buildings whose height required careful control of sideways forces as well as vertical loads. A tube structure uses closely spaced exterior columns and beams to help the building resist wind and other lateral forces.
The outer frame therefore takes an important structural role rather than serving only as an enclosure. Khan suits study of high-rise engineering and the relationship between structural systems and architectural form. His defining contribution was developing practical ways to organize tall buildings so that their overall frames could act together against the forces produced by their height.
help Fazlur Khan FAQ
What structural system did Fazlur Khan pioneer?
Fazlur Rahman Khan pioneered tube structures, which make a tall building's exterior frame work as a stiff vertical tube against wind and gravity. His work at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill helped make framed-tube and bundled-tube designs practical for skyscrapers.
Which skyscraper is most associated with Fazlur Khan?
He is closely associated with Chicago's Sears Tower, now called Willis Tower, whose bundled-tube design allowed the 110-story building to reach completion in 1973. The building remains one of the clearest public examples of Khan's structural thinking.
Was Fazlur Khan an architect or an engineer?
He was a structural engineer who worked with the architectural teams at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. His contribution was the structural system that let architects design taller, more open-floor-plan buildings.
Why did Fazlur Khan's tube system change skyscraper design?
The tube approach moved much of the lateral resistance to the building perimeter, reducing the need for dense interior columns. That made very tall buildings such as the 110-story Sears Tower more efficient and gave their interiors more usable space.
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