Yasmeen Lari: Architect for the Future - Image 1 of 6

Published on March 31, 2023

A rich exploration of the extraordinary life and work of celebrated architect Yasmeen Lari.

After more than three decades as a renowned global architect, Yasmeen Lari, the first woman to open her own architecture firm in Pakistan in 1964, developed Zero Carbon Architecture, which unites ecological and social justice. This volume, edited by Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny, and Marvi Mazhar, presents Lari's trajectory from exemplary modernist to zero carbon revolutionary, with a focus on her remarkable contributions to the global architectural movement to decarbonize and decolonize. The book includes extensive photographs, drawings, and plans from Lari's archive, most of which have not previously been shown or published.

Lari's architectural thinking and activism have always gone beyond the quest for a singular built solution. Rather, she strategically plans systemic approaches and solutions, be it for housing, a heritage foundation, or zero-carbon shelters with communities at risk. Original essays from diverse international contributors contextualize Lari's work; investigate architecture and the postimperial, postcolonial, and postpartition condition; and examine the intersections of architecture and human rights, climate change, decolonization, gender, care, activism, and vernacular innovation. More than a tribute to Yasmeen Lari's extraordinary career, this volume brings her legacy forward and shows how to create change today.

Karachi Modernism: Postcolonial Living
Housing Equality: Innovating Modernism and Tradition
Icons for a Karachi Boulevard
Material Ecologies: Building the Local
Heritage as Future: Decolonizing Legacies
Building Policies, Laws, and Institutions
The Architect as Humanitarian Worker
A Zero-Carbon Revolution in Architecture
Essentials for Life
Yasmeen Lari Interview
“Every decision has a global impact.”
Pakistan Under Construction
The Blossoming World of Yasmeen Lari
Recognition for Built Heritage: A Continuing Struggle
Karachi: Neoliberal Infrastructural Decisions and Development Crisis
The Gendered Impacts of Climate Change in Karachi
The Right to Housing
Care by Design: Women, Change, and the Climate Crisis
A Building Becomes More Beautiful by Its Usage
The Stove Solution: Yasmeen Lari and the Reclamation of Feminist Knowledge
Teaching Zero-Carbon Design Methodologies
Building, Wounding, and the Future: On Planetary Care