Yasmeen Lari

UNESCO, Adviser, Heritage Foundation Pakistan, Executive Director

Dr. Yasmeen Lari graduated from Oxford Brookes. Her journey from international modernism for the elite to zero-carbon architecture for the masses was rewarded with the RIBA Royal Gold Medal. A pioneer of Brutalism, she built houses for the urban middle class in an independent Pakistan, and designed urban landmark buildings and social housing. In 1980, she co-founded Heritage Foundation of Pakistan with her husband, Suhail Zaheer Lari, to safeguard its tangible, intangible, and vernacular heritage. Her Barefoot Social Architecture and Humanistic Humanitarianism fosters spatial socio-ecological justice for marginalized and vulnerable communities. She believes that modern architecture’s responsibility is to build a better future and confront today’s challenges – extreme weather events, fossil fuel dependence, and planetary destruction (with the use of building materials concrete and steel as significant contributors). She challenges architecture to work for ecological justice and "tread lightly on the planet.”