ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY
REACHING NEW HEIGHTS tells the groundbreaking story of Dr. Fazlur Rahman Khan, the visionary structural engineer whose innovations revolutionized skyscraper design and reshaped city skylines around the world. From his journey as a Fulbright Scholar immigrant in post-war Chicago to his pioneering development of tubular structural systems that made today’s supertall buildings possible, the film celebrates Khan’s extraordinary blend of intellect, creativity, and humanity. With insights from colleagues and archival material revealing the challenges and triumphs behind icons like the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) and John Hancock Center, this first feature-length documentary brings to life the untold legacy of a man who pushed engineering — and the very notion of what buildings could be — to new heights.
Known as the ‘Einstein of structural engineering’ and ‘father of the modern skyscrapers,’ Dr. Fazlur Rahman Khan was the structural engineer who designed the Sears (now Willis) Tower and the John Hancock Center in Chicago. In the process, he developed a series of tubular frame structural systems that paved the way for modern supertall skyscrapers.
Dr. Fazlur Rahman Khan on the far left, with architect Bruce Graham next to him, at the SOM office in Chicago, with a model of the John Hancock Center, 1960s. Photo Courtesy Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).
“Someone with great knowledge can change the world.”
In 1955, America was experiencing a post-World War II economic boom. There was a flurry of new construction. In Chicago, known as the birthplace of the high-rise, Mies van der Rohe was teaching at IIT and his modernist ideas had led to the emergence of the Second Chicago School of architecture. A young engineering graduate, Fazlur Rahman Khan, a Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), arrived in Chicago after earning two master’s degrees and a PhD in just three years as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He soon found himself employed at one of the world’s top architecture firms, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). He had simply walked into the firm’s office off the street, requested an interview, and left there with a job offer in hand. There, he would go on to design America’s tallest building at the time—the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower)—and develop a series of structural systems that would change the course of the skyscraper, allowing builders to go higher than ever before possible.
View of Sears (Willis) Tower under construction, Chicago, Illinois, 1972.
Photo Courtesy SOM.
“It meant that now the sky was the limit [in regard to building height],” said John Zils, structural engineer and former colleague of Fazlur Rahman Khan at SOM.
“Khan considered tall building structure a work of art,” says Dr. Mir M. Ali, author of Art of the Skyscraper: The Genius of Fazlur Khan. At the same time, he was highly concerned with the social and practical aspects of buildings as places where people lived and worked.
In 1982, while at the peak of his career, Dr. Khan died unexpectedly from a heart attack at the age of 52. He was on a business trip in Saudi Arabia.
This is the untold story of pioneering technical achievements by a man who was curious about the world and loved people, music, and poetry as much as he loved science and engineering.
REACHING NEW HEIGHTS is the first feature-length documentary on the legacy of Fazlur Rahman Khan.
Structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan (front row, second from the right), architect Bruce Graham (back row, far right) at the John Hancock Center construction site in Chicago in 1960s. Photo Courtesy of SOM.