Today’s fertile atmosphere provides a novel condition for the specific relationship between Architects and Structural Engineers as both try, breathlessly to keep up with the pace of change driven by technological advancement, economic and ecological challenges. The combination of the brute forces of computation and intuition have encouraged new innovations in processes and methods of design allowing a freer movement between disciplines and binding design as well as fabrication and construction more coherently. Professor Kara will try to share the impact of these expanded opportunities through a series of built projects. The presentation will show examples of “design research” that can be realized as projects from the use of new materials through to bespoke computation and inversion of the most familiar processes that have been routinized at the expense of creativity and innovation. The presentation will speculate about the need to banish the perception of the polarizing characterization of the Architect and Engineer that is prevalent in practice, by adapting a new behavior of interaction, deep appreciation of the design disciplines that the presenter has labeled as “The Pink Noise Of Design Engineering.”

Hanif Kara is a London-based structural engineer and Professor of Architectural Technology at Harvard GSD. Since co-founding Adams Kara Taylor (now AKT II), his particular ‘design-led’ approach and interest in innovative forms, material uses and complex analysis methods have allowed him to work on unique, award-winning projects with leading designers. The practice has won over 300 design awards.

This lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by The Ornamental Metal Institute of New York with support from Cooper’s The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture and The Albert Nerken School of Engineering. It is approved for 1.5 LU | HSW continuing education credits.