Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

In 1969 while director of Fritz Laboratory, Lynn S. Beedle MS'49, PhD'52 established the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat at Lehigh University. Beedle (d. 2003) had the vision that high-rise structures in the future hold great potential for making urban centers better places to live. The Council generated funding to honor Fazlur Rahman Khan, the designer/engineer of the Sears Tower in Chicago, the tallest building in the United States. Khan designed the revolutionary "bundled-tube" structural system, providing the Sears with large, virtually column-free spaces. Although the Council left Lehigh and established headquarters in Chicago, Lehigh still has the Fazlur Rahman Khan Lectureship series bringing many prominent civil engineers to lecture during the Spring Semester.