Appetite for construction: The pioneering engineer, Hanif Kara

Behind every great architect is a great engineer. A case in point is Hanif Kara, who has been integral to gravity-defying works for the best part of four decades. He arrived in the UK as a teenager with limited English skills, following his family’s expulsion from Uganda. After initially failing to secure a university place, he accepted a job as a steel fabricator and took night classes. He later enrolled at Salford University, graduating in 1982 with a degree in civil engineering. In 1996 he co-founded design-led engineering firm AKT and has since gone on to become an engineer of choice for starchitects, working with the likes of Zaha Hadid and David Chipperfield.

More recently, he has overseen the completion of Oxford University’s Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities with Hopkins Architects, where Monocle meets him.

What role can engineers play in delivering a better-built environment?
Historically, engineers have just waited until everyone has had their say – architects, developers and so on – before doing the numbers and making the building stand up. Now, that single-disciplinary approach to current global crises won’t work. Historically, those who built did everything, acting as client, designer and constructor. We’re going to have to get out of our silos and find trans-disciplinary solutions.

How can we break out of these silos?
Technology can unite disciplines. It can explain the mess we are in, in terms of environmental and economic crisis, but it can also be the means by which we might escape. We can use it to sensitively add to existing structures and build new ones.

How can designers work to deliver on this?
The professional rules of conduct are out of the window. We must arm ourselves with technology but moral and critical thinking too. We need to understand science and the humanities. The planet is everyone’s client and the quality of life of all people must be the driving force.
akt-uk.com