He was the master of the tall order. Bruce Graham, who died March 6 at 84, designed two of the biggest, most famous and most starkly beautiful buildings in the world, both for Chicago, where he spent almost his entire career at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In 1970 the 100-story John Hancock Center was a revolution in skyscraper design. Working with Skidmore's brilliant engineer Fazlur Khan, Graham conceived a tapering tower with an exterior system of structural supports, including massive X-braces that made its façade a knockout emblem of architectural force. In 1974 Graham and Khan produced another masterpiece with the...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
