Yasmeen Lari is a recipient of the Sitara-i-Imtiaz and Hilal-i-Imtiaz for her work as an architect, architectural historian, heritage conservationist and humanitarian.
Dawn caught up with her in Islamabad to discuss her efforts to preserve Pakistan’s cultural heritage. Ms Lari is among 60 women published by Unesco as having contributed the most towards its objectives, and was selected for Japan’s prestigious Fukuoka Asia Cultural Prize 2016 for outstanding contributions in preserving or creating Asian culture.
Q: You’ve worn various hats as a conservationist, historian and architect. What motivated you to shift from conventional architecture to heritage work?
A: In order to safeguard Pakistan’s cultural heritage, my husband Suhail Zaheer Lari and I co-founded the Heritage Foundation in 1980 as a family trust. As chief executive of the family-owned Khyber Insurance Co. Suhail had to give it up when it was nationalised by the first PPP government. Having studied the Modern Greats at Oxford, he became a noted historian and author. In 2000 I also gave up my architectural practice to devote more time to my writing and heritage work.
Q: What drew you to architecture in the first place?
A: My father, Zafarul Ahsan, was an [Indian Civil Service] officer who opted for Pakistan at the time of independence. During the 1950s he was the chairman of the Lahore Improvement Trust and the Thal Development Authority and laid the foundations of modern Lahore and new cities in Thal. He often talked about the requirement for qualified architects and planners in order to build great cities in the country. This led me to begin architectural studies in London, finally graduating from the Oxford School of Architecture [now Oxford Brookes].
Q: What is the most significant work you have done - in scale or in terms of emotional satisfaction - through the Heritage Foundation?
A: As Unesco’s National Adviser [2003-2005], and with the support of Ingeborg Breines, we were instrumental in saving the endangered mirror-encrusted ceiling of Shahjahan’s 17th century Shish Mahal in the World Heritage Lahore Fort.
Since the late 1980s, we have also been recording, documenting and conserving some of the most remarkable monuments in the world at World Heritage Makli, which saved the site from being placed on Unesco’s endangered list in 2012.
Building several hundred sustainable houses in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake in the Siran Valley and Kashmir with help from Veqarul Islam, Murad Jamil and Atifa Asghar was significant in a different way, as was devising the Build Back Safer with Vernacular Methodologies (BBSVM) programme to help build over 40,000 low-cost, earth, lime and bamboo flood and seismic resistant shelters [in partnership with IOM], thus placing Pakistan in the lead as the largest zero carbon footprint shelter programme in the world.
Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2016
