FFrom Will Allsopp's whimsical columns to Zaha Hadid's gravity-defying curves, there's always someone behind an architect's impossible visions. In the case of the most unlikely buildings of the 21st century, that person is more often than not Hanif Kala.
The Ugandan-born engineer has been announced as the 2024 recipient of the award. thorn medala prestigious distinction hitherto awarded to architects and their theorists, but never to engineers. As the trusted mathematical mind of so many, and as a professor who has inspired generations of designers, Carla's contributions to architecture are highly recognized. It's no exaggeration to say that without him, many of the boldest buildings of the past two decades would not exist. At least the columns wouldn't be so thin, the spans so dramatic, and the curves so smooth.
“I see my role as making architects' dreams come true,” says Carla. An extraordinarily successful person, he also describes his work as akin to that of a therapist, eliciting the intentions of his collaborators and understanding their ambitions. “But instead of putting them on the couch, I lie on the couch with them.” He's both an engineer and a co-designer, but he's less of a traditional problem solver and more of a question taker. Someone who reinvents and provokes. Rather than telling architects how, he asks why.
for peckham library In London, where he won the Stirling Prize in 2000, architect Will Alsop was adamantly opposed to installing columns of any kind. He wanted a giant, impossible cantilever instead. Carla convinced him that a row of slender steel columns was essential to support the reading room, and that their nimble angles not only added fun but also served the important purpose of intersecting the structure. . And so, Alsop's trademark “Dance” column was born.
Similarly, Carla provided terrifyingly complex computational analysis for many of Zaha Hadid's most extreme works, and he built more projects with her than any other architect. She came to him to help her figure out what was next. Pheno Science Center Located in Wolfsburg, Germany. Built in 2005, the structure is a gigantic concrete spaceship, with pillars flowing into slabs that melt into walls, forming a continuous sinuous shell. It was one of the world's first seamless 'single surface' structures and the largest use of self-compacting concrete in Europe. Nothing like this had ever been attempted before. “That project almost killed us,” Carla says. “It took two years of computational modeling using German weapons-grade software to make this work.”
Few were willing to take on such a demanding mission. But Kara has been willing to go where others have not, acting like an outsider with nothing to lose. “Immigrants are never afraid,” he says. “Because he came in with nothing and has a willingness to invest in others and push them to the point where he too can benefit.”
Carla arrived in Cheshire at the age of 14 after her family was expelled from Uganda by the brutal regime of Idi Amin. He didn't speak much English, so he failed all of his O-levels. He took a job as a welder in a fabrication yard, where he learned how to draw steel templates on floors. “I really fell in love with painting that picture,” he says. “I loved the process of communicating how something was made.'' He went to night school while working, and eventually managed to get into the University of Salford to study civil engineering. After graduating, he spent his time doing “hardcore engineering.” He first worked on oil rigs in Aberdeen, then moved to roller coasters, enjoying the challenge of gravity-defying loops. Time spent working with engineers anthony hunt At YRM, he was exposed to the emerging fields of experimental fabric construction and computational geometry, and “that really sparked my interest,” he says.
When the recession hit in the 1990s, he considered quitting engineering and opened several dry cleaning businesses to make a living. But his wife encouraged him to start his own company, AKT, which he founded in 1996 with two former YRM colleagues, Robin Adams and Albert Williamson Taylor. “We started by reducing the steel tonnage on other people's projects,” he says. “But we soon realized we needed to talk to some architects.” Carla discovered an architecture bug during the work (which was aborted) Plans to turn Battersea power station into an Olton Towers-style theme park. “After the oil rigs and roller coasters, the buildings looked so simple,” he laughed.
He began teaching at the Architectural Institute, then a hotbed of the avant-garde, and his easy-going outsider charm soon brought him close to Future Systems' Hadid, Alsop, and Jan Kaplicki. “I felt empathy,” he says. “They all worked very hard to create something, but I saw the value in what they drew, and I enjoyed being with them.”
Kara doesn't drink, but she happily sat and discussed with Alsop over a glass of wine, clearly enjoying the glamorous camaraderie of the emerging “starchitect” scene. Perseverance to make their reckless plans viable. He has since worked with numerous Pritzker Prize winners, including the Sainsbury Research Institute in Cambridge, the Bloomberg headquarters in London, and the Townhouse at Kingston University, on four Sterling Prize-winning buildings. Recent projects include the giant Google offices in London's King's Cross and Mountain View, California, Thomas Heatherwick's ill-fated Vessel in New York, and several projects with David Chipperfield.
“I felt quite schizophrenic at times,” he says. “I had a meeting with Mr. Zaha in the morning and Mr. Chipperfield in the afternoon. He was the complete opposite and always knew where the pillars were.” Working with Chipperfield on one of the world's most ambitious net zero carbon projects for the London School of Economicstrying to reuse as much of the existing 1950s building as possible. It's what he calls “a meticulous process of undoing.”Advanced reverse design” – also the subject of my current studio at Harvard University, where I have been professor of architectural technology since 2012.
In many ways, Carla believes the current focus on reuse and low-energy design is a form of atonement for past sins. How does he feel in retrospect, having promoted an era of self-indulgent creation that pursued only form, with little regard for the environmental impact of his work? For example, at the Pheno Science Center, 75,000 tons of of concrete and 4,700 tonnes of steel, each building produces a disproportionate amount of carbon dioxide.
“There's no way to justify something like that now,” he admits. “When you look back at that time, you start to wonder what we were doing. We were all caught up in a capitalist mode. We were bigger than anything. We just wanted to do something better and different. We respected our profession as engineers, as well as architects.”
More recently, his work on Norman Foster's Bloomberg headquarters, which was completed in 2017 and hailed as “the world's most sustainable office building,” has included 15,500 tons of steel (twice as much as the Eiffel Tower) from Japan, 600 tons of imported bronze and stone loaded in a quarry from India. “Rather than embodying carbon in the material, we focused on operational sustainability,” Kara says. “The debate is longevity versus circularity, and in that case we went for longevity. Being close to St. Paul's Cathedral, we wanted something that would last just as long.”
But he recognizes that the debate has changed in recent years. he recently Co-author of a book on structural timberwith Jennifer Bonner, taught studio with Amin Taha. on top of the structural stone. He also Collaborating with researchers at Imperial College to study the shape of 'clean concrete'captures carbon during manufacturing and reduces cement use by up to 40%. But like some architects, he is not evangelical about a single material. “Any monoculture is bad,” he says. “Bio-based materials like wood have their limits. It's not the answer to everything, and neither is stone.”
While he's all for reuse, he doesn't support the idea of pausing new building construction. “We need to build better, but not use as much as possible,” he says. “Use as few materials as possible.” An optimist by nature, Carla strongly believes that solutions exist to avoid climate change. “If technology gets us into this mess, it's going to save us,” he says.
