Hanif Kara lecture

Excerpt from Hanif Kara's April 2012 Current Work lecture.

July 16, 2012

Recorded on April 25, 2012.

Current Work is a lecture series featuring leading figures in the worlds of architecture, urbanism, design, and art.

For his Current Work lecture, structural engineer Hanif Kara, the cofounder and design director of AKT II, discusses how technological, economic, and ecological factors are reshaping the relationship between architects and engineers.

Kara discusses what he refers to as the strategic model of practice, which, requires the engineer to “sit in the mind” of the architect or client, while thinking with the expert knowledge of the engineer. He explores two collaborations with Heatherwick Studio—East Beach Cafe and the UK Pavillion—as well as his work on the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.

Hanif Kara is the Pierce Anderson Lecturer in Creative Engineering at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Visiting Professor for Architectural Technology at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He is a commissioner for CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment), and was the first engineer to be a judge for the annual RIBA Stirling Prize 2011. He serves on the board of trustees of the Architecture Foundation and has been an advisor to the Aga Khan Development Network.

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