Yasmeen Lari, recognized as the first female architect in Pakistan, has had a significant impact both in her home country and internationally due to her innovative and socially conscious approach to architecture. Through a systemic approach, Lari’s work takes into consideration local culture, site-specific opportunities, and challenges. Born in Pakistan in 1941, Yasmeen Lari moved to London with her family at the age of 15. After graduating from Oxford Brooks School of Architecture, she returned to Pakistan at the age of 23 to establish Lari Associates with her husband, Suhail Zaheer Lari. The couple settled in Karachi. Here, she began to study Pakistan’s ancient towns and the vernacular architecture of earth buildings, igniting her interest in the architectural heritage and traditional techniques of her country. In 1980, she co-founded the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan with her husband, becoming instrumental in the preservation of her country’s rich cultural heritage.
After retiring from her architectural practice in 2000, Lari shifted her focus to humanitarian efforts, helping the victims of natural disasters, such as the 2005 earthquake and subsequent floods. Lari has also developed a system of distributing knowledge across rural communities and empowering them to self-build and rediscover indigenous materials and techniques. This system has proven to be an effective and self-sustaining alternative to top-down models of charity, creating a rights-based model of the poor helping the poor, and moving toward achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, with an emphasis on goal number one: No Poverty. For her significant contributions to the field of architecture, sustainability, and activism, Yasmeen Lari was awarded the Jane Drew Prize in 2020, and the RIBA Ryal Gold Medal in 2023.
