2024-12-04
30 分钟This year’s Soane Medal winner, Hanif Kara, joins us at Midori House. Plus, a studio visit to the Dutch artistic practice, Rive Roshan. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is Monocle on Design, a show where we discuss everything from architecture and craft to furniture and fashion.
I'm Nick Moniz.
On today's program we hear from Hanif Kara, this year's Soanes Medal winner.
We talk engineering, architecture, psychology and more.
Plus a studio visit to a Dutch artistic practice.
All that coming up on Monocle On Design.
Hanav Kara recently became the first engineer to win the Soanes Medal, an annual award typically given to architects by the Sir John Soanes Museum in London.
His win is significant on a number of levels.
To start, Hanif arrived in the UK as a teenager after his family was expelled from Uganda by the terrifying military dictatorship of IDI Amin.
With little English language skills, he experienced academic struggles and failed all his O levels.
Following school, he got a job as a welder before taking night classes.
That helped him land a spot studying civil engineering at Salford University.
After graduation, he worked as an engineer on oil rigs and then roller coasters before ultimately co founding Act 2 in 1996, a design led engineering firm.
He has since gone on to become the engineer to the Starchitects, working with the likes of Zaha Hadid and David Chipperfield to discuss his remarkable career and his recent win of the Soanes Medal.
Hanif joined me at Midori House.
I was surprised and shocked that they had considered it, but equally really pleased that they're far more open minded than engineers are in the breadth of thinking.
Given the current state of the world in the many crises and on top of that the climate, that our focus in engineering is too narrow.
But for the Zone to pick somebody like me was like drawing in the world and saying this is a bigger problem and let's speak to many others to and give an award to somebody who's trying to do that.
My institution congratulated me and that's the first time in 40 years ever, despite the fact I have an OBE and many other awards, it's the first time I've heard from them.
Which tells me something, you know, to say, well you should have been awake because I think the people like the Soane Museum are in touch with what's going on in the world and have been for centuries.