[1] The annual awards are judged by an independent panel of experts commissioned by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), a non-profit organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
[4] The 2002 award was given and named after Lynn S. Beedle, an American structural engineer and founder of the Council on Tall Buildings And Urban Habitat.
[5] In 2004 a second lifetime award was created, the Fazlur R. Kahn Lifetime Award, named after Bangladeshi-American structural engineer and architect Fazlur Rahman Khan, which recognizes an individual for 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.
[8] The first CTBUH Fellows in 2006 were A. Eugene Kohn, Charles A. DeBenedittis, Gilberto do Valle, and Henry Jack Cowan.
[9] The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat added two categories starting in 2007 which recognize completed structures for excellence.
In 2008 the CTBUH Best Tall Building Award winners were New York Times Building in New York City; Shanghai World Financial Center in Shanghai, China; 51 Lime Street in London, England; and Bahrain World Trade Center in Manama, Bahrain.