Pakistan’s first female architect Yasmeen Lari has been granted the prestigious Royal Gold Medal for architecture from King Charles, making it the first architecture medal of his reign.
The renowned Lari received the award in recognition for her role in designing homes for Pakistan’s vulnerable and poverty striken community, after retirement from her practice:
“Whilst recognising the importance of her role in practice, as a symbol of change in Pakistan, it is the work she has undertaken since her retirement in 2000 that the Royal Gold Medal celebrates.”
“In the last 23 years Lari and The Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, which she founded with her husband, have reacted imaginatively and creatively to the physical and psychological damage that a number of major natural disasters, earthquakes, floods and conflicts have inflicted on the people of Pakistan.”
Lari was born in Dera Ghazi Khan and shifted to London with her family when she was 15, where she studied at the Oxford Brookes University, moving back to Karachi in 1964 and opening Lari Associates alongside her husband.
The duo also founded the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan in 1980, which has been spearheading conservation projects around rural villages in Pakistan, earning it the Recognition Award from the United Nations.
She received the Sitara-e-Imtiaz in 2006 and the Fukoka Award in 2016 for her services to arts and culture.
