Elevating the profile of women in architecture, Ms. Yasmeen Lari is Pakistan’s first woman architect with several landmark projects as her claim to fame, including the Finance & Trade Centre and Pakistan State Oil House in Karachi. From state-of-the-art corporate buildings, Ms. Yasmeen Lari, in the course of her illustrious career, shifted her attention to humanitarian work by involving herself in disaster relief efforts, rehabilitating dispossessed families by working to build safer homes and shelters using indigenous materials such as lime, stone, mud and wood, while aspiring towards a zero-carbon footprint and encouraging self-reliance. She won the Jane Drew Prize, which recognizes women’s contributions to architecture, for her tireless humanitarian work over the past two decades. One of Ms. Yasmeen Lari’s particularly impactful innovations has been the Chulah program, which teaches women to build hygienic, smokeless earthen stoves, enclosed and elevated on podiums, to make cooking cleaner and safer for households, improving the lives of thousands. She co-founded the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan to undertake research and safeguard Pakistan’s cultural heritage, and has conserved several historic monuments in World Heritage Sites of Makli and Lahore Fort as well as important heritage sites in other parts of Pakistan. In 2006, in recognition of her services to the architectural profession and heritage conservation, she was awarded Sitara-e-Imtiaz, one of the highest civil awards, by the Government of Pakistan. Ms. Yasmeen Lari’s Heritage Foundation has also created a Zero Carbon Cultural Centre on a 4-acre campus in Makli to train the next generation of craftswomen, a colorful social space for enthusiasts to come and learn a whole new set of skills in sustainable living.
Celebrating Pakistan’s 75th Independence Day, FWBL pays tribute to iconic women whose legacies are strongly interwoven in the fabric of the nation’s heritage. Their remarkable achievements, in their own unique way, contribute to who we are as a nation today
