Episode 91: Yasmeen Lari
The time was 1941, the place Pakistan, Yasmeen Ashan was born. Her father was an ICS officer during British Rule, who worked on major development projects, which was how Yasmeen became interested in architecture. As a teenager, she fell in love with Suhail Zaheer Lari eventually they were married in 1962. She applied to architecture school and was accepted into the program at Oxford Polytechnic, known today as the Oxford Brookes University, School of Architecture. While in architecture school Yasmeen married and had her first child, a daughter. A year after that she graduated with her architecture degree in 1964. After college, she and her young growing family moved back to Pakistan. There she started her own firm Lari Associates in the city of Karachi, and just like that, she became the first woman architect in Pakistan. Five years later she became a Member of The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
Some of her most iconic projects include the Angoori Bagh Housing (ABH) complex built in the 70s, the Taj Mahal Hotel in Karachi, The Lari Residence, and the Finance and Trade Center in Lahore built in the 80s. And the Pakistan State Oil House in the 90s. While Yasmeen was running a successful architecture practice, she and her husband were also starting and running The Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, which by the way is still going strong to this day. They cataloged and shared their findings for almost 600 structures in the city of Karachi. They pushed for legislation to make protecting these places a law, such as the Sindh Cultural Heritage (Preservation) Act, passed in 1994. Through this legislation, The Heritage Foundation was able to protect a huge number of heritage sites. And then in the year 2000, Yasmeen announced she was retiring from architecture practice.
Caryatid: Ileana Vives Luque
Ileana Vives Luque is an architect and preservation activist from Costa Rica. She graduated from the Universidad de Costa Rica or UCR. She is super special because she is a listener suggestion. Osman H. recommended her for this episode because she was his professor in architecture history class. He remembers she was a walking library. She would tell students exactly on which page of which book they should look up a specific architecture source material. She was one of his favorite professors because of how passionate she was about architecture history and the patrimony of Costa Rica.
Ileana strives to preserve the architectural history of her country. She is a contributing writer of the book History of Architecture in Costa Rica. This book is the culmination of a project that began in 1995, Ileana alongside her colleagues conducted research for two years and from 1997 to 1998 ran a traveling exposition of Costa Rican architecture from pre-columbian era to modernity. The book was published in 1998.
She has served as director of the Center of Investigation and Conservation of the Cultural Patrimony in Costa Rica. In 2013 she led an effort named “Let’s Save our Architecture History Patrimony” which was an open call to the public to suggest spaces which should be restored as necessary and protected as part of Costa Rica’s architectural legacy.
References
Block, India, and India Block. “Pakistani Architect Yasmeen Lari Wins the Jane Drew Prize 2020.” Dezeen, 9 Feb. 2022, www.dezeen.com/2020/01/30/yasmeen-lari-jane-drew-prize-2020.
De Internet, Hermes Soluciones. “Portal Patrimonio.” Portal Patrimonio, 18 Apr. 2013, www.patrimonio.go.cr/actualidad/actualidad_2013/2013-04-18_sra_ileana_vives.aspx.
Florian, Maria-Cristina. “Barefoot Social Architecture: 10 Projects by Yasmeen Lari, the 2023 RIBA Royal Gold Medal Winner.” ArchDaily, 20 Dec. 2023, www.archdaily.com/1000417/barefoot-social-architecture-10-projects-by-yasmeen-lari-the-2023-riba-royal-gold-medal-winner.
Lari, Suhail Zaheer. “Oxford.” Suhail Lari Pakistan, www.suhaillaripakistan.com/chapters/Oxford.
RIBA Architecture. “Yasmeen Lari Receives the 2023 Royal Gold Medal.” YouTube, 14 June 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=85nDCxBxJiw.
The Architectural League. “Yasmeen Lari: Barefoot Social Architecture Benefitting People and the Planet.” YouTube, 24 Jan. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOcguowq32I.
volquardsen@ou.edu. Taj Mahal Hotel, Karachi | Architecture for Non Majors. 25 Nov. 2020, fall2020.thedude.oucreate.com/uncategorized/taj-mahal-hotel-karachi.
Wikipedia contributors. “Yasmeen Lari.” Wikipedia, 7 Nov. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasmeen_Lari.
“Yasmeen Lari.” Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/495500.
“Yasmeen Lari - the Woman Who Taught Pakistan How to Build for the Poor.” The Express Tribune, 18 Feb. 2019, tribune.com.pk/story/1912748/yasmeen-lari-woman-taught-pakistan-build-poor.
“Yasmeen Lari Age, Husband, Family and Biography.” Hamariweb.com Profiles, hamariweb.com/profiles/yasmeen-lari_8054.
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