Who is Fazlur Rahman Khan? Here’s why Google is celebrating his 88th birthday with a doodle

“A humanitarian in his personal as well as professional life, he was inspired by the belief that his work had a positive impact and he encouraged other engineers not to lose track of the purpose of their profession. When he was named Construction’s Man of the Year (in 1972, at the age of 42), he reflected, ‘The technical man must not be lost in his own technology. He must be able to appreciate life, and life is art, drama, music and, most importantly, people’,” writes his daughter Yasmin Sabina Khan, who also authored the book Engineering Architecture: The Vision of Fazlur R Khan.

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Designed by Lydia Nichols, the Google Doodle is visible in the US, Colombia, Iceland, the UK, Sweden, Portugal, Greece, Ukraine, Japan and his country of birth, Bangladesh.

Khan shifted to the United States for his graduate studies and, according to Yasmin, the “the promise of challenging work drew him to a busy design office in Chicago – that of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill – where he remained until his death in 1982.” It was a huge surge in demand for residential and office space in the 1960s and early 1970s made tall buildings desirable, but at the time the traditional design and construction methods weren’t as economical. Khan recognised that a new approach to skyscraper design was needed and set his mind to the task.