Hanif Kara is a practicing structural engineer, the Pierce Anderson Lecturer in Creative Engineering at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and Visiting Professor for Architectural Technology at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, since 2008.
As design director and cofounder of Adams Kara Taylor in 1996, his curiosity and “designled” approach with interests in innovative form, material uses, and complex analysis methods has allowed him to work on award-winning, pioneering projects.
His career extends beyond the structural engineering disciplines and led to his appointment in 2008 as a member of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment—the first engineer to hold this post for the government watchdog that monitors the quality of design throughout the United Kingdom. In March 2007 he was appointed as one of fifteen members of the Design for London Advisory Group to the Mayor of London. His constructed work is recognized as being linked with the research and education areas of design. He has been teaching at architectural schools in Britain, Europe, and the United States since 1996. He co-tutored a diploma unit at the Architectural Association in London from 2000 to 2004, acted as a consultant for the AA Design Research Lab for a number of years, and was an external examiner at the AA from 2005 to 2008.
Hanif was selected for the master jury for the 2004 cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and served as a project reviewer in 2007 and 2010. He was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2007. Hanif is also on the board of trustees of the Architecture Foundation, and in 2011 he received the ACE Engineering Ambassador of the Year Award. He was on the jury for the RIBA Stirling Prize 2011.