The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced that Professor Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan’s first female architect, will receive the 2023 Royal Gold Medal for architecture. The award, one of the highest honors for architecture and the first to be personally approved by King Charles III, recognizes Yasmeen Lari’s work in championing zero-carbon self-build concepts for displaced populations. The Royal Gold Metal will be officially presented to Yasmeen Lari in June 2023.
Yasmeen Lari is one of the most powerful voices in architecture in Pakistan and worldwide, through the impact of her architecture and humanitarian work. Her designs address issues of deforestation, pollution, and the health hazards faced by women in rural areas, responding to their needs in a systemic and locally specific fashion. Since officially retiring in 2000, her attention has shifted to creating accessible and environmentally friendly solutions and construction techniques to help people below the poverty line and those displaced by natural disasters, such as the devastating floods that covered a third of the country in 2022. In 1980 she co-founded the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan with her husband, Suhail Zaheer Lari, pioneering the design of self-built sustainable shelters and housing, easy to deploy in case of crisis. Since then, she has helped build more than 36,000 homes for flood and earthquake victims in her home country, structures that withstood subsequent natural disasters.
Lari has also designed a version of a Pakistani Chulah, an outdoor stove to replace other unsafe cooking methods used by women in South Asia, which regularly exposed them to burns, fires, and respiratory issues. Using her knowledge of design and local building techniques, she developed a smokeless, low-cost mud and line plaster stove that protects both women and the environment. An elevated mudbrick platform also helps protect the installation from flooding and provides a more hygienic and ventilated workstation, further demonstrating the architect’s commitment to feminist and environmental activism.
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Architecture as Activism: Yasmeen Lari’s Eco-Feminist WorkI was so surprised to hear this news and, of course, totally delighted! I never imagined that as I focus on my country's most marginalized people — venturing down uncharted vagabond pathways - I could still be considered for the highest of honors in the architectural profession. - Professor Yasmeen Lari
Born in 1941 in Pakistan, Yasmeen Lari moved to London with her family at the age of 15, where she studied art before being accepted into the School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University, then Oxford Polytechnic. At the age of 23, she returned to Pakistan with her husband to establish her architecture firm, Lari Associates. The office’s work includes projects for major governmental, business, and financial institutions. In 2020, Lari retired from the office, focusing solely on humanitarian work, and earning international recognition. Through her entire body of work, Yasmeen Lari aims to democratize architecture and encourage practitioners to solve pressing social issues with their design skills, regardless of the cause. In 2020, Yasmeen Lari was awarded the Jane Drew Prize for her extensive humanitarian work over the last two decades.
It was an honor to chair the committee that selected Yasmeen Lari. An inspirational figure, she moved from a large practice centered on the needs of international clients to focusing solely on humanitarian causes. Lari’s mission during her ‘second’ career has empowered the people of Pakistan through architecture, engaging users in design and production. She has shown us how architecture changes lives for the better.
Lari’s work in championing zero carbon and zero waste construction is exemplary. She has reacted imaginatively and creatively by doing affordable projects that address the real and often urgent need for accommodation, and basic services, but with generosity and an eye for the potential of everyday materials and crafts to make architecture at all scales. Her way of working also sets out to address the physical and psychological damage caused by major natural disasters – disasters that sadly inevitably will be ever more prevalent in our densely populated and climate-challenged planet. - RIBA President, Simon Allford
The choice highlights RIBA’s new direction, encouraging architects to focus not only on the privileged but also on humanity at large and on those suffering from disparities, conflicts, and climate change. Previous winners of the Royal Gold Medal include Balkrishna Doshi in 2022, who was recognized for his visionary urban planning and social housing projects, combining modernism with Indian vernacular, and Sir David Adjaye in 2021, for his groundbreaking and worldwide interventions, ranging from private houses, exhibitions, and furniture design, to major cultural buildings and city masterplans.
Info via Riba.
