1925-2010

Bruce J. Graham, author of famous skyscrapers like the John Hancock Center (1970) and the Sears Tower (1974), was born in Colombia in 1925. Son of a Canadian-born international banker, Graham moved to the United States when he was 15 years old – Spanish was, in fact, his native tongue –, studying engineering at the University of Dayton in Ohio and architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Professionally, his most noteworthy contribution was carried out in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), which he directed since 1951 until his retirement in 1989. Admirer of the oeuvre of Mies van der Rohe, whom he considered his master, his projects transformed the profile of the city of Chicago with a language marked by frankness and constructive clarity, which would often be expressed with the reflection of the building structures on the facades. Our country has a good example of his work method with the tower of the Hotel Arts in the Olympic Villa of Barcelona (1992), city for which the American architect had expressed his affection on several occasions.