“We are on the verge of scaling up,” says the architect Yasmeen Lari. “I need to achieve my target of one million in two years, starting this month.” One million homes, that is, to replace those lost in last year’s floods in her home country of Pakistan, one of the costliest natural disasters ever. This target sounds fantastical, but then Lari’s achievements to date are already exceptional and unexpected. The first woman to register as an architect in Pakistan, she made a successful career as a designer of office blocks and hotels, which she ended when she ceased to find it interesting. She then built another career documenting and preserving the country’s heritage, and then another helping the survivors of natural disasters to rebuild their homes.
Lari’s work has won her, at the age of 82, the 2023 royal gold medal for architecture, a 175-year-old award given annually by the British monarch on the advice of the Royal Institute of British Architects. It typically goes to designers of photogenic and high-profile cultural buildings – the last two winners were David Adjaye and Grafton Architects – rather than those who, as Lari describes herself, “work for the poor”. She professes surprise: “It’s not easy for them to pick someone who is not doing the usual thing.”
