Chicagos towering intellect Essay Example For Students

Chicagos towering intellect Essay Gawk at the John Hancock Center today. Marvel anew at the Sears Tower. Then give a quiet thanks to  Fazlur  Rahman  Khan. Khan, the erudite, Bangladesh-born Skidmore Owings Merrill structural engineer, figured out a way to hold up these big buildings and make them beautiful. He created the iconic X-bracing that races up the John Hancock Centers sides.  Khan  was the structural genius behind Sears Tower; he shaped the building as much as architect Bruce Graham did. The techniques  Khan  perfected with these buildings and others around the city are replicated around the world. But the average person standing outside the Sears Tower probably never has seenKhans name. Until now. The city will unveil an honorary street sign at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the northwest corner of Jackson and Franklin right outside the Sears Tower renaming the portion of the intersection Fazlur  R.  Khan  Way.  Khan  died of a heart attack while traveling through Saudi Arabia in 1982. He was 52. The honorary name change is largely due to Sadruddin Noorani, a local businessman who originally sought to get Franklin between Jackson and Randolph named for  Khan. Muslims are always looked upon as terrorists or something bad, said Noorani, who did not know  Khan. So I always look for the good things the positive. We have this innovator. And he was Muslim. A joke based in a truth in engineering circles: Whistler painted a famous picture of his mother, but he skipped committing his old man to canvas. Whistlers father was an engineer. Engineers figure out how to take the weight of a building and efficiently transfer it down to the structures foundation. The job has to be done in a way that makes the building flexible, usable and attractive. Its an amazing, complicated task. Still, engineers often are unfairly consigned to slide-rule nerd anonymity. Who was the architect? we ask, but seldom add, Who was the structural engineer?  Khan   Faz to those who knew him came the cl osest to breaking the partition. He was stylish, witty, urbane; a world traveler. His office had supercool Marcel Breuer cantilevered chairs. He lived in Hyde Park and, later, Lincoln Park with his Austrian-born wife, Lisalotte  Khan, and their daughter Yasmin. He was interested in people, said Yasmin Byron,  Khans daughter, a California structural engineer. He was concerned with people and how engineering affected people. He would travel to different countries, and it was important to him to find out what the culture was like and how he could relate the engineering to the culture, rather than taking a Western idea and transferring it. He was a very broad person, said Skidmore Owings Merrills John Zils, the project engineer on the Sears Tower. In the end, it is what gave him his ability to take engineering and apply it in a more humanistic way than a lot of us are capable of.  Khan  was born in East Pakistan now Bangladesh. He came to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship after receiving a bachelors degree in civil engineering at the University of Dhaka in 1950. The Fulbright brought  Khan  to the University of Illinois. There, he received two masters degrees and a doctorate in engineering.  Khans first and only job after college was at Skidmore Owings Merrill. He ended up becoming a general partner. With SOM architect Myron Goldsmith,  Khan  experimented with Hancock-style exterior bracings in the early 1960s a few years before Big John was built.  Khans Hancock X-bracing runs right inside some of the buildings residential units. Some Hancock planners originally balked at the idea. Not now, though. Its almost like a status symbol, now, to have a `diagonal in your apartment, Zils said. It symbolizes that you live in the Hancock. It is probably the most efficient system that he used, said Byron, who is writing a book on her fathers life. But he realized you could only have one of those in a city. Sears, Roebuck and Co. was a giant company looking for a lot of space. .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 , .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 .postImageUrl , .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 , .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77:hover , .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77:visited , .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77:active { border:0!important; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77:active , .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77 .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u9c4b7f0f0a317081b5b9b2a0410d8a77:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Mary Cassatt The Bath, 1892 Oil on Canvas, 39 x 26" The Art Institute of Chicago EssayThey wanted a complex that could house their massive retail operation, yet have prime rental space above with lots of good views. They didnt seek out wanting to build the worlds tallest building. But thats what happened. The problem was how to design a building with a big base that got smaller at the top, Zils said. One of the solutions was to take a tubal structure and bundle the smaller tubes together (at the bottom) and drop them off as you came up. Bruce Graham and Faz eventually worked it out. Sears Tower is not a skyscraping monolith, but a grand assemblage of many parts. Each part plays its role, then bows out as the building goes upward. At top is one triumphant section topped with twin television antennas. The triumph will be relived this afternoon as  Khans friends and devotees gather on the 100th floor of the Sears Tower to honor his work.