AKT II’s Hanif Kara on CLT virtue signalling, concrete innovations and Bloomberg’s embodied carbon

Episode 25. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. In this episode, we hear from structural engineer Hanif Kara who is working with leading architects on projects across the globe for ambitious clients with resources to deliver sustainable outcomes, including Google, Apple and British Land. Recent projects include Grafton’s Stirling-Prize winning Town House in Kingston, Grafton’s Marshall Building at the LSE, Foster + Partners' Bloomberg building and the new Google headquarters currently on site at King’s Cross with Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick.

In contrast with most of our guests so far, Hanif is not a Climate Champion from way back, but we’re delighted to have him on the pod because he is at the forefront of what is being delivered on the ground now and his design-led approach is pushing best practice. In this episode, he advocates reverse-engineering as a forensic method that utilises complex computational methods to retrofit and extending existing buildings.