Yasmeen Lari: Architecture for the Future at Architekturzentrum Wien

The Architekturzentrum Vienna demonstrates an example position that evidences future architecture with the world’s first monographic exhibition on Yasmeen Lari. Yasmeen Lari (*1941), Pakistan’s first female architect, constructed landmark modernist structures before launching a zero-carbon self-build initiative for climate refugees and the landless. The exhibition Yasmeen Lari: Architecture for the Future highlights Lari’s work as an illustration of how architecture’s relationship to the future has altered.

“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 exhibition Yasmeen Lari’s goal. The goal of Architecture for the Future is to contribute to a new understanding of architecture that is concerned with people and the environment. Such a technique will seek answers in specific situations, such as building differently using low-carbon materials or the circular economy, not 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