VIDEO: Yasmeen Lari-Architects Should Serve Humanity

Meet the Pakistani architect Yasmeen Lari, who in 2023 received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in recognition for her humanitarian and social conscious work. “What architects have is this amazing skill for design. And that is needed when you have disparities. When you have deficiencies in resources. When you have a whole mass of people who have nothing. And as an architect, you can relate to them because you are trained to think of the context, to design for the context.”

“Also, we are taught this amazing ability of coordination with all kinds of different disciplines. We know how to think of our clients, and if you consider the poor people as your client, then you will think that way. So I think architects are the best people to serve humanity today.”

Yasmeen Lari, b. 1941 in Dera Ghazi Khan in Pakistan, moved to the UK with her family aged 15 and went on to study architecture at Oxford Polytechnic, which is now Oxford Brookes University. At 23, she returned to Karachi in Pakistan and established her studio Lari Associates, which successfully created numerous offices and housing projects. These include Pakistan’s first public housing scheme, the Anguri Bagh project and landmark buildings such as the Finance and Trade Centre and the Pakistan State Oil House in Karachi.

However, it was her work focused on creating low-impact buildings for Pakistan’s marginalised communities that drew global attention. Her work through the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, which she co-founded in 1980 with her husband Suhail Zaheer Lari, has created 50.000 sustainable self-built shelters and over 80.000 ecological cooking stoves. Since her “retirement” in 2000, she has dedicated herself to the foundation and humanitarian causes.

Yasmeen Lari has been – among others – awarded the prestigious Fukuoka Prize for Arts & Culture in 2016, the Jane Drew Prize for raising the profile of women in architecture and design in 2020 as well as the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Royal Gold Medal for 2023 in recognition of the humanitarian and socially conscious work “she has undertaken since her retirement”, creating homes for the country’s most marginalised communities. Lari, Pakistan’s first female architect, is the second woman to receive the accolade in her own right, following Zaha Hadid.

Yasmeen Lari was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in July 2023. The interview took place in connection with the World Congress of Architects, UIA 2023, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Camera: David Schweiger, Edited by: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan, Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner, © Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2023, Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet and C.L. Davids Fond og Samling. This film is supported by Dreyersfond and Fritz Hansen