Steel Institute Lecture | Hanif Kara: Sitebound — Despair to Opportunity

The challenges faced by all design disciplines, exacerbated by multiple crises, including climate change can often lead to despair. In response, our work over the past five years has focused on interdisciplinary efforts to synthesize knowledge into a more holistic understanding of these challenges while seeking new opportunities through application of design research and patronage of many.

Through various projects with architects and clients, I will share our interpretations, collaborations, and ongoing questions. My sense is that we have managed to break out of the necessary isolation of specialization the traditionally hierarchical nature of structural engineering to ensure successful project delivery and maintain relevance today. I will also intertwine some of the interactions with Academy to arrive in this position. I do not promise a definitive narrative, as this remains a work in progress.

Professor Hanif Kara OBE is a practicing Structural Engineer and Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard. He is recognized for linking design, research, education, and practice. He co-tutored a Diploma Unit at the Architecture Association, London from 2000 to 2004 and was a Visiting Professor of Architectural Technology at KTH Stockholm from 2007 to 2012.

As Design Director and co-founder of AKT II (est. 1996), his particular ‘design-led’ approach and interest in innovative form, pushing material uses, sustainable construction and complex analysis methods have allowed him to work on numerous pioneering projects at the forefront of many challenges facing the built environment.

The practice has won over 350 design awards including the RIBA Stirling Award for the Peckham Library, London in 2000, for the Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge in 2012, and for the Bloomberg European HQ, London in 2018 and The Kingston town house 2021.

Hanif’s career extends into wider areas of design beyond the structural engineering disciplines. This led to him receiving the UK ACE Engineering Ambassador Award in 2011and the OBE(oficer of the British empire “for services to Architecture, Education and Engineering” Jan 2022 .He was also awarded the Fazlur Khan lifetime achievement award by the Council for Urban design and tall buildings in 2022 ,The London Design medal 2023,the presidents medal 2024 for the British council for offices and the prestigious SOANE medal 2024 as First Engineer to be awarded this.

He is also the first engineer to be appointed on the Steering Committee for the highly regarded international AKAA (Aga Khan Award for Architecture) where he continues today and was on the AKAA Master Jury for the 2004. He is a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Institute of Civil Engineers, Royal Academy of Engineering, Institute of Structural Engineering, the Royal Society of Arts, and on the board of trustees of the Zaha Hadid foundation.

Formerly he was a CABE (a National Watchdog commission for architecture and built environment) Commissioner and served as a member of the Design for London Advisory Group to the Mayor of London. Since 2015 he has served as a review panel member of the National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCR) (Digital Fabrication) at ETH Zurich and currently sits on the UK National Infrastructure Commission’s Design Task Force and Expert Advisory Group and is a member of the HS2 design review panel.

He has also contributed to a number of widely published works including ‘Design Engineering’, 2008, a retrospective of AKT’s first decade, and ‘Interdisciplinary Design: New Lessons from Architecture and Engineering’, 2012, co-published with Harvard. Recently he edited ‘Deliverance of Design – making, mending, and revitalizing structures’, a look at the works of AKT II from 1996 – 2016. His most recent publications are ‘Design Engineering Refocused’ the ‘Architecture of Waste’ and “matters of Engineering design”.

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