Thornton Tomasetti Vice Chairman Aine Brazil receives CTBUH Lifetime Achievement Medal

Steve Watts, CTBUH chairman and Aine Brazil. Photo: CTBUH

New York — Thornton Tomasetti announced that Vice Chairman Aine Brazil P.E., F.SEI, LEED AP, received the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s (CTBUH) prestigious Fazlur R. Khan Lifetime Achievement Medal for her contributions to the advancement of the built environment. She was presented with the award during the CTBUH 2018 Tall + Urban Innovation Conference in Chicago on May 31.

The Fazlur R. Khan award, bestowed by the CTBUH Board of Trustees, recognizes demonstrated excellence in technical design and/or research that has made a significant contribution to a discipline for the design of tall buildings and the built urban environment. Brazil was recognized for her technical contributions to tall building design and her unwavering commitment to the improvement of the built environment.

Brazil is the first woman engineer and the third Thornton Tomasetti executive to receive the Fazlur R. Khan Lifetime Achievement Medal. In 2012, Thornton Tomasetti Founding Principals Charlie Thornton and Richard Tomasetti were jointly awarded the honor.

With a career spanning more than 40 years, Brazil has been responsible for the design and construction of nearly every building type and is widely recognized for her engineering achievements in the United States and internationally. Brazil has helped shape Manhattan’s skyline, having led structural engineering teams that designed more than 3 million square feet of high-rise office development in New York City’s Times Square, including the structural design of the 975,000-square-foot Eleven Times Square, the city’s first core-first office tower.

Her portfolio includes such landmark projects as the 54-story Bloomberg Tower, Greenberg Pavilion at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, and Via 57 West. Brazil has been actively involved in the development of 30 and 10 Hudson Yards as well as the redevelopment of LaGuardia Airport. Outside the U.S., Brazil’s work includes the 35-story Soyak Kristalkule Finansbank Headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey and the 43-story Palazzo Lombardia in Milan, Italy.

During her career, Brazil has received numerous professional awards for her excellence in the field. In 2018, she became a member of the National Academy of Engineering and, in 2017, was inducted into the National Academy of Construction and selected honorary member of AIA New York. Brazil also received the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Homer Gage Balcom Award in 2016 and the Ireland International Engineer Award in 2014. She has served as a member of the Mayor’s Commission on adopting the International Building Code and as the first president of the Structural Engineers Association of New York.

Brazil is passionate about encouraging women to join the engineering profession and is currently co-chair of the NYBC Council of Industry Women. She also established a mentoring program at Thornton Tomasetti, Women@TT, to help the firm’s female employees grow their careers.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from University College, Galway, Ireland and a master’s degree in structural engineering from Imperial College of Science and Technology in London.