David Taylor catches up with AKTII’s Hanif Kara to talk through the ‘secret’ of being the engineer on four different Stirling Prize winners, including the latest, The Town House with Grafton Architects.
David Taylor
Hello! So, Hanif. Firstly, many congratulations for being the engineer on the Stirling prize winner this year, Town House. I think it's your fourth overall. What is the secret, first of all? And as a subsidiary question to that, do you think engineers get enough recognition in awards? And in this particular award?
Hanif Kara
The first thing to say is that it's overwhelming in 20 years to have arrived at the position where you have been part of four winners. It's not something you plan. It just happens. But my view would be the secret is work, work, work, in that the people that do these kind of projects, the authors, which is really the architects, spend years mastering their own discipline. And the best of them need a lot more support and effort, because they also understand that it's about a common approach to it and how do you bring the best out of the other people around you? So, I feel the secret is that. If you're really up for design and the impact it has, that good quality buildings have, then you become part of this network that I think constantly leaves you bare. Or you're fearful of not winning something all the time.
I think that's what's happened to us, for instance, in that we've always been associated with high quality work produced for architects, with architects, and for developers and for the city. So, I think that that would be my secret: it is really just effort, and being in the moment, all the time, being relevant, keeping up with what's going on in architecture. And it does move, you know? They shift around, these things.
So when you look at those four [Peckham Library, Simon Sainsbury Centre, Bloomberg, Town House], they are very different types of projects. And I think the Stirling and awards in general, in my view, are great recognition. Because other than anything else, and there's many ways of talking about them, they change the mindset of people. They change the mindset of those who consume these buildings, those that are studying architecture and engineering, those that use them. So, there's a certain kind of intangible benefit that they give that I feel is a necessity, because you can't always measure goodness, in just doing great project after great project. Nobody even notices. So, I think that these are the kinds of conditions you need to be operating on and have a particular mindset, so you can actually help approach these things in a way where you take the opportunities. And you're lucky, to be frank with you; you know, the final prize is not easy to win. I've been on the jury and have been very fortunate to be invited by the RIBA to be on one of the Stirling juries, and the conversations are difficult and the jury is not always aligned. And I think the decision in my case at least was almost in the last minute, because everyone deserves it once they've got through to the shortlist. So I think it's fantastic, in a sense.
David Taylor
Were you surprised?
Hanif Kara
I was. I think it's commonly known that I had thought another project was more of a favourite…
David Taylor
Which one?
Hanif Kara
The Amin Taha one in Clerkenwell, because I think in many ways, despite some aspects of it lacks in rigour, but I think that it's the proper project and for what it faced and got over in terms of what architecture and construction can do deserved to be something that we celebrate, so I thought that would be the winner.
David Taylor
And your chat just now about both mindsets needing to be changed and also fortune - being lucky - both figured in your Instagram post of yesterday. I'll read it out because I'd like you to unpack it a little bit. You said: ‘`RIBA Stirling Prize times four; we are lucky to have engineered these four projects that lay bare a participation in critical intellectual agenda, whilst unmasking cynics who don't see how mindsets can be changed by awards. This soft diplomacy is getting us heard, as we unashamedly celebrate and connect deeper to design’. Firstly, can I ask you well, to unpack it a little bit? But who are the cynics? Is that us lot? Is that the journalists? Or...
Hanif Kara
…No, it's not! It's not. I think there is a whole group of people who self-perpetuate. And to some extent there is the media, who have to generate award after award after award in order to stay alive and create income. And that creates a certain cynicism in the profession. And in the intellectual professions, at least. And even among students, there's some cynicism about people just buying awards, or getting into a position where they're bound to win because they go for something that's quite easy to win. So, I think there's a lot of cynical conversations. I'm certainly victim of that, having been fortunate enough to have won many, and also been on many juries. So that's the cynics.
The intellectual comment was really about time. When an award like this, if you look at all the winners over at least the 20 years that we've been associated with them, and you look at all the shortlists, it's a body of knowledge, an incredible body of intellectual knowledge that we can always refer back to. When we’re doing new projects when we're rethinking policy, when we're rethinking how you construct, when you're rethinking how you teach. So, it creates an archive of thought that actually reinforces that there has been a past and there is a recent past. We don't need to start from ground zero every time; and that there will be a future. So, the cynics often bring on the doomsday scenarios with all the difficulties we have about not building new or not building at all and all sorts of stuff. And I feel that the intellectual rigour is that, and the other part of it is different types. If you look at from housing to lab facilities, to what is now considered to be the Town House, which has mixed use; it's got public space, and private spaces, and the library. So, I see these moving the needle quite a long way in raising the floor of what we construct in everything you do from your own house to everything else we do in terms of built environment. Hence, I say that it kind of unmasks those kinds of criticisms, when remarkable projects like this can win.
We had some criticism when we won with the Bloomberg project. That it was quite expensive and so on. What wasn't appreciated by people is that it was a remarkably advanced technological building; it stands as that. And it's difficult not to admire it in every aspect of craft to the tools that we used to make it. So, when people start criticizing, say, the budget of a building, or they criticize the type of building that wins, we need to unmask those things and remind people that, ultimately, this is about knowledge; building knowledge, spreading knowledge, sending people to appreciate it.
So that's what I was trying to say in my post yesterday, because you can't say it with a singular project. But when you had the fortune of four different types and four different architects whose starting position is different, then you can legitimately claim the claim I make. That, of course, this is not entirely an accident. It is also about being involved in high quality design. Which the RIBA fortunately recognized with the Stirling award in particular. It was fantastic to work with Grafton Architects, by the way, and we look forward to the next prizes...!