Hanif Kara is a civil and structural engineer and professor in practice at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and the co-founder of AKT II, a 350-person engineering practice based in London. The firm won the Stirling Award for Peckham Library in 2000 (with (Will Alsop), the Sainsbury Laboratory in 2012 (with Stanton Williams), and the Bloomberg European Headquarters in 2018 (with Foster + Partners). He is co-author of Blank: Speculations on CLT with Jennifer Bonner, and the recipient of the 2022 Fazlar Khan Lifetime Award from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

Intro/Outro: Great Things, by Echobelly

Discussed:

One Park Drive (with Herzog & De Meuron)

Castilla (with Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners)

240 Blackfriars (with AHMM)

The Tower and the Bridge by David P. Billington

Joint studio with Farshid Moussavi, using reclaimed steel

Google HQ London (with BIG & Heatherwick Studio)

The Francis Crick Institute (with HOK & PLP Architecture)

Culture flaps at SCI-Arc and The Bartlett