Yasmeen Lari

She has been awarded Jane Drew Prize 2020, raising the profile of women in architecture and design.

In 2018, Lari designed a fuel-efficient and affordable chulah (stove) that improved on traditional stoves and did not emit toxic smoke into Pakistani homes. Her stove design won her a World Habitat award that same year.

Yasmeen Lari is one of the founders and current chairwoman of the Pakistani Chapter of the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism (INTBAU), created in 2018.

In 2016, she received the Fukuoka Prize for Arts & Culture.

In 2011, she received the Pakistani "1st Wonder Women of the Year Award".

In 2006, Lari was awarded the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, one of the highest civil awards by the Government of Pakistan, in recognition of her services to the architectural profession and to heritage conservation of historical sites in the country.

In 2002, the Heritage Foundation received the U.N. Recognition Award from the United Nations for its efforts and results to promote cultural and historical conservation.

Lari retired in 2000 from architectural practice. However, she remains active with her historical preservation by serving as the advisor of the UNESCO project, as the executive director of Heritage Foundation Pakistan, and as the chairperson of the Karavan Initiatives.

Lari and her husband founded the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, a humanitarian group in 1980. Since 2010, she has built some 50,000 Pakistani homes for humanitarian causes, such as for the victims of earthquakes and flooding. Lari implements traditional building techniques and local materials, such as in the 2013 rebuilding after floods in the Sindh Valley region of Pakistan. In 2013, she helped villagers in Awaran District who were hit by the 2013 Balochistan earthquake.

Her later projects included housing such as the Angoori Bagh Housing (ABH) (1978), and commercial buildings such as the Taj Mahal Hotel, Karachi in 1981, the Finance and Trade Center in 1989, and the Pakistan State Oil House (PSO Company headquarters) in Karachi in 1991.

In 1969, Lari became an elected Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

After graduating from the Oxford School of Architecture in 1964, Lari returned to Pakistan at age 23 with her husband, Suhail Zaheer Lari, and opened her architecture firm Lari Associates in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. She became the first female architect in Pakistan. Initially, she faced difficulties when workers at construction sites challenged her authority or knowledge because of her gender.

Yasmeen Lari (born 1941; Urdu: یاسمین لاری) is Pakistan's first female architect. She is best known for her involvement in the intersection of architecture and social justice. Since her official retirement from architectural practice in 2000, her UN-recognized NGO Heritage Foundation Pakistan has been taking on humanitarian relief work and historical conservation projects in rural villages all around Pakistan. She was awarded the prestigious Fukuoka Prize in 2016.

Yasmeen Lari was born in 1941 in the town of Dera Ghazi Khan, and spent her early years in and around Lahore in a renowned clan of Iraqi Biradari. Her father Zafarul Ahsan, an ICS officer, was working on major development projects in Lahore and other cities, through which Lari was exposed to architecture. Her sister is Pakistani politician Nasreen Jalil. When she was 15 years old, she first left Pakistan to go to London with her family. Initially there for a vacation, she and her siblings ended up enrolling in school in London. Upon her rejection from architecture school, Yasmeen Lari studied two years of arts in London before being accepted into the School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University (previously named Oxford Polytechnic).