Yasmeen Lari Wins ‘The Jane Drew Prize 2020’
Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan’s first female architect, has been awarded the Jane Drew Prize 2020 for raising the profile of women in architecture. Aged 79, Lari has continued to dedicate her life to architecture since closing her practice in 2000, advising UNESCO and building homes for tens of thousands of people affected by floods and earthquakes in her home country.
“I am touched and humbled to be included among the galaxy of architects who have received this prize,” Lari said.
Previous winners of the award, which is named for English architect and modernist pioneer Jane Drew, include Odile Decq, Denise Scott Brown, and Amanda Levete.
The Jane Drew Award is part of the Architects’ Journal (AJ) and The Architectural Review’s W awards series, formally known as the Women in Architecture awards.
Lari is Pakistan’s first female architect
Born in Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan, in 1941, Lari grew up in Lahore until she left to visit London at the age of 15. Initially there for a family holiday, she ended up staying and continuing her education in England.
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She tried to enrol in architecture school, after her interest was piqued by seeing her father work on development projects in his role with the Indian Civil Service.
Her self-financing Lines Area Resettlement programme in 1980 was an ambitious project to rehouse 13,000 people in self-built homes without displacing them from where they lived and worked.
Lari also designed landmark buildings in Pakistan, such as the Finance and Trade Centre and the Pakistan State Oil House in Karachi.
Together with her husband, Suhail Zaheer Lari, she founded her humanitarian and conservation project the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan.
Closed her practice to focus on humanitarian work
She closed her practice in 2000, and devoted her energy to using her experience in building with bamboo and mud to help when a series of man-made and natural disasters devastated the region.
When the Pakistani Armed Forces were fighting Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2007, Lari built community kitchens in refugee camps for those displaced by the conflict.