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How an Immigrant from Bangladesh Became America's Master Builder

67 points by miraj 11y ago

pj_mukh 11y ago
His structural engineering was famously used on the Trump Tower. How awkward.
aadilmaan 11y ago
And they say immigrants have no value...
- USANEEDSHELP 11y ago
  Legal immigrants
  - krapp 11y ago
    An immigrant's value has no relationship to their legal status.
    - mc32 11y ago
      On average the ones without proper docs are lower educated and obviously take bottom tier jobs. Legal immigrants tend to be college/uni educated and are able to enter higher paying jobs and some contribute to R&D. Many countries have some EDU requirements or some monetary requirements for fast track legal immigration. It's not unusual. Now, back when the while world was mostly physical labor, things were different.
  - pj_mukh 11y ago
    Actually, their productivity within the economy is probably hampered by their status.
- shah_s 11y ago
  Who is they?
  - sremani 11y ago
    At the worst it is NumbersUSA or similar organizations. The politics of immigration in America are Political Correctness quagmire and so its very unlikely we would have a productive conversation on this topic on interwebs.
- iamcreasy 11y ago
  "Today, foreign-born residents account for only 13% of the U.S. population but hold nearly a third of all patents and a quarter of all Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans." Source : http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-secret-of-immigrant-genius-1452875951 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-secret-of-immigrant-genius-1...
JBReefer 11y ago
>No building style better represented America’s industriousness, monomaniacal greed, disregard of tradition, and eagerness to attempt feats that more established cultures considered obscene. And while those indelicate traits prompted Americans to develop the skyscraper... The article is good, but that tainted my view. Cheap edginess is intellectually lazy, not to mention those "cultural traits" have nothing to do with why the first very tall buildings were in the US.
jamaly 11y ago
The single biggest reason why America has been such a great nation, comes down to its openness and its willingness to embrace change. If these two values are hampered in any way, then America's decline is inevitable.
- danharaj 11y ago
  > The single biggest reason why America has been such a great nation, comes down to its openness and its willingness to embrace change. Like that one time they abolished slavery peacefully instead of fighting a bloody civil war.
surlyadopter 11y ago
"He eventually convinced the owner to leave the braces in place by using an engineer’s most powerful rhetorical device: purposefully indecipherable technical jargon intended to confuse the other party into submission. Khan got his way, and the top tier diagonals were built." I love it.
- SilasX 11y ago
  Why is that something to be proud of? If that works for a good idea, it would work for a scummy, fly-by-night idea too. And in my hell, there's a special place for deliberately obscure their own field.
  - jxramos 11y ago
    I'm not entirely sure he approves of it but its comedic nonetheless and certainly happens.
Flammy 11y ago
> Wframeshen wind pushes up against the side of a building, the structure will have a tendency to bend. In order to resist this bending, the building must have a certain rigidity or it would flop over like an Italian soccer player. Randomly... shots fired
rayiner 11y ago
> No building style better represented America’s industriousness, monomaniacal greed, disregard of tradition, and eagerness to attempt feats that more established cultures considered obscene. And while those indelicate traits prompted Americans to develop the skyscraper, it was our openness and multiculturalism that brought us our greatest skyscraper builder: a Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant named Fazlur Rahman Khan. What an offensive article. Highlight the characteristic ("Muslim immigrant") that have nothing to do with why Khan is famous, while ragging on what was his life's work. There is a great, possibly apocryphal, story about Khan. He was in Bangladesh and someone asked him "why don't you come back here now that you're successful?" He replied: "I build skyscrapers for a living, what am I going to do here?" That aside, taking the Chicago architecture tour and visiting the Sears Tower is a quasi-religious experience for an engineer. This guy built a skyscraper that was the tallest in the world for more than two decades. He practiced architecture in a city where people just did stuff like that: reverse the course of a river, raise all of downtown a couple of stories, build skyscrapers with floating foundations in soft soil, hang a building from a truss because they only bought the air rights over some rail tracks, etc. You leave with the overwhelming sense that these are people who built a high-density skyscraper city in a midwestern state with cheap land as far as the eye can see just because they could.
- bcrotan 11y ago
  Uh the article seems pretty effusive in its praise for tall buildings. It also had two words about his faith and 2500 about his engineering abilities. It's fine if you didn't read it.
peejaybee 11y ago
Oh, man, the comments section on that article is a dog's breakfast.

67 points by miraj 11y ago

pj_mukh 11y ago

His structural engineering was famously used on the Trump Tower. How awkward.

aadilmaan 11y ago

And they say immigrants have no value...

USANEEDSHELP 11y ago
Legal immigrants
- krapp 11y ago
  An immigrant's value has no relationship to their legal status.
  - mc32 11y ago
    On average the ones without proper docs are lower educated and obviously take bottom tier jobs. Legal immigrants tend to be college/uni educated and are able to enter higher paying jobs and some contribute to R&D. Many countries have some EDU requirements or some monetary requirements for fast track legal immigration. It's not unusual. Now, back when the while world was mostly physical labor, things were different.
- pj_mukh 11y ago
  Actually, their productivity within the economy is probably hampered by their status.
shah_s 11y ago
Who is they?
- sremani 11y ago
  At the worst it is NumbersUSA or similar organizations. The politics of immigration in America are Political Correctness quagmire and so its very unlikely we would have a productive conversation on this topic on interwebs.
iamcreasy 11y ago
"Today, foreign-born residents account for only 13% of the U.S. population but hold nearly a third of all patents and a quarter of all Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans." Source : http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-secret-of-immigrant-genius-1452875951 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-secret-of-immigrant-genius-1...

JBReefer 11y ago

jamaly 11y ago

The single biggest reason why America has been such a great nation, comes down to its openness and its willingness to embrace change. If these two values are hampered in any way, then America's decline is inevitable.

danharaj 11y ago
> The single biggest reason why America has been such a great nation, comes down to its openness and its willingness to embrace change. Like that one time they abolished slavery peacefully instead of fighting a bloody civil war.

surlyadopter 11y ago

"He eventually convinced the owner to leave the braces in place by using an engineer’s most powerful rhetorical device: purposefully indecipherable technical jargon intended to confuse the other party into submission. Khan got his way, and the top tier diagonals were built." I love it.

SilasX 11y ago
Why is that something to be proud of? If that works for a good idea, it would work for a scummy, fly-by-night idea too. And in my hell, there's a special place for deliberately obscure their own field.
- jxramos 11y ago
  I'm not entirely sure he approves of it but its comedic nonetheless and certainly happens.

Flammy 11y ago

> Wframeshen wind pushes up against the side of a building, the structure will have a tendency to bend. In order to resist this bending, the building must have a certain rigidity or it would flop over like an Italian soccer player. Randomly... shots fired

rayiner 11y ago

> No building style better represented America’s industriousness, monomaniacal greed, disregard of tradition, and eagerness to attempt feats that more established cultures considered obscene. And while those indelicate traits prompted Americans to develop the skyscraper, it was our openness and multiculturalism that brought us our greatest skyscraper builder: a Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant named Fazlur Rahman Khan. What an offensive article. Highlight the characteristic ("Muslim immigrant") that have nothing to do with why Khan is famous, while ragging on what was his life's work. There is a great, possibly apocryphal, story about Khan. He was in Bangladesh and someone asked him "why don't you come back here now that you're successful?" He replied: "I build skyscrapers for a living, what am I going to do here?" That aside, taking the Chicago architecture tour and visiting the Sears Tower is a quasi-religious experience for an engineer. This guy built a skyscraper that was the tallest in the world for more than two decades. He practiced architecture in a city where people just did stuff like that: reverse the course of a river, raise all of downtown a couple of stories, build skyscrapers with floating foundations in soft soil, hang a building from a truss because they only bought the air rights over some rail tracks, etc. You leave with the overwhelming sense that these are people who built a high-density skyscraper city in a midwestern state with cheap land as far as the eye can see just because they could.

bcrotan 11y ago
Uh the article seems pretty effusive in its praise for tall buildings. It also had two words about his faith and 2500 about his engineering abilities. It's fine if you didn't read it.

peejaybee 11y ago

Oh, man, the comments section on that article is a dog's breakfast.