The Modern Concrete Skyscraper: The Composite Building System

Dr. Joseph Colaco returns to the Museum with a lecture that builds on his 2024 talk in our Modern Concrete Skyscraper series on the “tube-in-tube” structure of the 1971 masterpiece, One Shell Plaza in Houston by SOM architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur Khan. In this second lecture Colaco will trace the development of the steel-and-concrete composite building system and will discuss the design and construction of the 1000-foot tall Texas Commerce Plaza (now JPMorgan Chase Tower) in Houston, which when completed in 1982 was the tallest composite building in the world. The tower utilizes an open-tube composite perimeter frame combined with a central concrete shear wall.