JPMorgan Chase Tower, Houston, 1982. Photo by Gerald Moorhead via SAH Archipedia.
This is a virtual program — online only.
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.
Joseph Colaco
Dr. Joseph Colaco received his Ph.D. in structural engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1965, the same year he began to work in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill under the firm's lead engineering partner Fazlur Khan. He joined the team designing the 100-story John Hancock Centre in Chicago, researching and analyzing many of the details of the innovative trussed steel tube design. He served as SOM's project engineer on One Shell Plaza in Houston. In 1969, Colaco moved to Houston and in 1975 launched his own firm, CBM Engineers, and continued working on tall buildings in many American cities and also other countries. He opened an office in Dubai and worked on many tall buildings in the Middle East.
To register for this FREE program, click on the link above to RSVP. You will be redirected to Ticketstripe to reserve your seat. The Zoom room is limited to 100 people. If you can't enter the Zoom, you can watch the program live on our YouTube channel when it begins at 6pm.