Yasmeen Lari: Architecture for the Future

With the world’s first monographic exhibition on Yasmeen Lari, the Architekturzentrum Wien shows an exemplary position that evidences an architecture for the future. As Pakistan’s first female architect, Yasmeen Lari (*1941) designed iconic modernist buildings before initiating a zero-carbon self-build movement for climate refugees and the landless. The exhibition Yasmeen Lari: Architecture for the Future uses Lari’s oeuvre as an example to show how the relationship of architecture to the future has changed.

“We have to rethink everything, and we have to do it now,” states the over 80-year-old architect. The exhibition shows Lari’s exceptional trajectory from her modernist beginnings in the 1960s to her present-day humanitarian architecture based on decolonization and decarbonization. In 1964, she established her architectural office in Karachi, Pakistan. She designed internationally acclaimed houses and public housing estates, researched and rescued built heritage. Since 2005, she has redefined architecture as climate activism—in one of the countries most affected by climate change globally. For her flood-resistant self-build program, Lari uses traditional technologies and low-cost materials, such as clay, lime and bamboo. Yasmeen Lari’s credo for an architecture for the future is: “We must tread lightly on the planet.”

The aim of the exhibition Yasmeen Lari. Architecture for the Future is to contribute to a different understanding of architecture that cares for people and nature. Such a practice will find locally situated answers in specific contexts, from building differently with low-carbon materials or the circular economy, to no longer erecting new structures, and working with adaptive re-use. “With this exhibition, the Architekturzentrum Wien wants to make an active contribution to ensuring that we don’t give up the possibility of the future,” says Az W Director Angelika Fitz.

Curators: Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny, and Marvi Mazhar
Scenography: Alexandra Maringer
Graphic design: Alexander Ach Schuh

Publication
On the occasion of the exhibition, The MIT Press will publish the book Yasmeen Lari: Architecture for the Future, edited by Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny, Marvi Mazhar, and Architekturzentrum Wien. The book provides an overview of Yasmeen Lari’s architectural oeuvre and contains previously unpublished photographic and plan material from the architect’s archive. Eleven new essays by international authors from South Asia, Europe, Brazil, and the USA contextualize Yasmeen Lari’s life’s work with regard to questions of architecture and the future.

Contributors: Abira Ashfaq, Cassandra Cozza, Angelika Fitz, Runa Kahn, Anne Karpf, Elke Krasny, Marvi Mazhar, Chris Moffat, Anila Naeem, Raquel Rolnik, Helen Thomas, Rafia Zakaria

Eds.: Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny, Marvi Mazhar, and Architekturzentrum Wien
Publisher: The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262546096. 288 Pages, In English.