At the age of 82, architect Yasmeen Lari is forging a path to strengthen rural communities in Pakistan that live on the brink of climate change.
Lari, Pakistan’s first female architect, scrapped a lifetime of multimillion-dollar projects in the megacity of Karachi to develop flood-proof bamboo houses.
The few pilot settlements that have been established are credited with rescuing families from the worst of the monsoon flooding that left a third of the country under water last year.
“We continue to live in them,” said Khomo Kohli, a 45-year-old resident of Pono Colony village, located several hundred kilometers outside Karachi.
“Some residents had to move to the street where they lived for two months until the water receded.”
Today, Lari is campaigning to expand the project to a million houses made from cheap local materials, bringing new jobs to the most vulnerable areas.
“I call it a kind of co-building and co-creation because people have an equal part in decorating it and making it comfortable for themselves,” he said.
The architect, who trained in the United Kingdom, is behind some of Karachi’s most famous buildings, including brutalist constructions such as the Pakistan State Oil headquarters, as well as a string of luxury homes.
As he considered retirement, a series of natural disasters — including a massive 2005 earthquake and 2010 floods — hardened his resolve to continue working with his Heritage Foundation in Pakistan, which oversees his rural projects.
“I have to find a solution, or find a way where I can strengthen people’s capacities so that they can take care of themselves, rather than waiting for outside help,” he told the AFP news agency.
“My motto is zero carbon, zero waste, zero donor, which I think will lead to zero poverty,” he said.
Climate change is making monsoon rains heavier and more unpredictable, scientists say, increasing the urgency of flooding in the country – especially when the poorest live in the most vulnerable those places.
Pakistan, with the fifth largest population in the world, is responsible for less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions but is one of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather.
Pono Colony, with about 100 houses, was developed just a few months before the devastating summer rains came last summer and displaced eight million people.
The village’s tall houses are protected from rushing water, while their bamboo skeletons – embedded deep in the ground – can withstand the pressure without being uprooted.
Known locally as “chanwara”, mud huts are an improved take on the traditional one-room houses that dot the landscape in the southern province of Sindh and state of Rajasthan in India.
They only need local materials: lime, clay, bamboo and thatch. With straightforward training by locals, they can be assembled for about $170 – about one-eighth the cost of a cement and brick house.
In rural Sindh, tens of thousands of people are still homeless and large tracts of farmland remain without water nearly a year after the country’s worst floods.
The World Bank and Asian Development Bank in a joint study estimated that Pakistan has sustained $32bn in damage and economic loss and will need $16bn for reconstruction and rehabilitation.
Lari remembers working in social housing in Lahore in the 1970s when local women scrutinized her plans and asked her where their chickens would live.
“Those chickens really stay with me, the needs of women are really the highest in my design,” he said.
At this time, the redesign of traditional stoves has become a significant part – now removed from the floor.
“Earlier, the stove was at ground level and therefore it was not very clean. Small children would burn themselves in the fire, stray dogs would lick the pots and germs would spread,” said Champa Kanji, who was trained by Lari’s team to make stoves for homes in Sindh.
“Seeing girls become independent and empowered gives me great joy,” Lari said.
Lari’s work has been recognized by the Royal Institute of British Architects, who awarded him the 2023 Royal Gold Medal for his dedication to using architecture to change people’s lives.
“An inspirational figure, he moved from a large practice centered on the needs of international clients to one focused solely on humanitarian causes,” RIBA president Simon Allford said.
“It’s a great feeling,” Lari said. “But of course, this also made my tasks difficult. I need to make sure that I can now deliver. “
