He returned from the flower shop and – like a magician in a theater – showed Graham what he had bought: a bamboo stick. He told Graham to wait… and went down to a flower shop.įazlur Khan – who was only 33-years-old at the time – was a kind of entertainer: a talkative and charming guy who liked to tell jokes and do magic tricks. Khan, however, didn’t answer immediately. So, when Bruce Graham was commissioned to build a residential tower in Chicago, he asked his engineer to design the cheapest possible structure. A mid-rise tower was still being built here and there, but superskyscrapers – such as the Empire State Building – seemed to be a thing of the past. The question was a question of survival because, at that time, the world of architecture was wondering if skyscrapers had stopped making sense.

In 1962, architect Bruce Graham – from the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) – asked engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan to tell him which was the most economical structure possible to build a skyscraper. A race that – without anyone noticing – had actually already begun three years earlier. A year later, the construction engineer responsible for the project received a terrifying call: “The building is sinking into the ground.” A race began to save not only that skyscraper, but all the skyscrapers in the world. In 1965, the famous psychic Jeane Dixon predicted that what is today known as the John Hancock Center in Chicago was going to collapse.

Willis tower photo