About this talk

Running time: 43 minutes

Yasmeen Lari is Pakistan’s first female architect. Now in her 80s, she is a recent recipient of the Jane Drew prize. After making her name with modern housing projects such as Anguri Bagh in Lahore in the 1970s, and prestige corporate buildings like the Pakistan State Oil House in the 1990s, the earthquake that struck northern Pakistan in 2005 put her on a radical change of path.

In this talk, she explains how she was compelled to find ways to help the earthquake victims to rebuild their communities using local materials and building traditions. In the years since, she has developed her approach to low cost, zero-carbon buildings into what she calls Barefoot Social Architecture (BASA) - an example being the Zero Carbon Cultural Centre in Makli, a training space established by the Heritage Foundation, an organisation she co-founded with her husband. What, she asks, should the role of the architect be in a time of climate emergency?

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