Hanif Kara, Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), is the recipient of the 2024 Soane Medal. Awarded by Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, the medal recognizes a distinguished practitioner who has advanced the public’s understanding of architecture.

On November 26, Kara will give the seventh Soane Medal Lecture at the museum. His talk will consider how the field of architecture can address the climate crisis. “As a scientist, I like to think that hope can turn into possibilities,” says Kara. Drawing on experiences over his distinguished career as an engineer and educator, Kara emphasizes the role of structural engineers at the forefront of sustainable practices.
“In the complex world that we live in today, it is impossible to solve the problems we face without interdisciplinary collaboration and thinking,” Kara says. “Only through curiosity and continual enquiry, questioning practices and norms, will we find the solutions that are so urgently required.”
In addition to his role at the GSD, Kara is creative director and co-founder of AKT II, a practice that has won over 350 design awards, including RIBA Stirling Prizes for four projects: the Peckham Library, London (2000); the Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge (2012); the Bloomberg European headquarters, London (2018); and Kingston University London–Town House (2021). The practice also received the RIBA Lubetkin Prize for the UK Pavilion at Shanghai Expo in 2010.
“Hanif Kara is the engineer to whom Sir John Soane would have turned to realize his most ambitious, exciting designs,” says Will Gompertz, Deborah Loeb Brice Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum. “They might be divided by two centuries, but they are united in the belief that innovative, sympathetic, beautiful architecture can make a lasting and positive impact on the world.”