It was October 2005, and the catastrophic earthquake killing some 79,000 people in Pakistan had reduced the valley to mud and ruins.
Yasmeen Lari, a 65-year-old architect, was there to help lead the reconstruction of settlements, but she had never done disaster work before. Lari was known for designing smooth towers of glass and concrete. But here, she'd be drawing plans for earthquake-resistant homes using stone and timber debris(木材碎片). With each passing day, she felt deeply right to do disaster-relief work. So she made it her new mission, spending the next four months working with volunteer architects and engineers from Pakistan and abroad.
Inspired by local buildings made with sustainable materials such as timber debris, bamboo and mud, Lari's shelters can better withstand disasters. Lari says this local, cost-effective and zero-carbon approach is creating an ecosystem. Anyone can learn by watching DIY videos on Lari's Zero Carbon Channel on YouTube.
The design won a UN World Habitat Prize in 2018."We need to believe in people's capacity to bring about change. I treat displaced people as partners, not victims. They know what to do," says Lari.
Over the decades, Yasmeen Lari has won many awards as architect and environmentalist. While it may seem like an unlikely path for a girl who was born into a well-to-do family in1941, she had an unconventional upbringing. At home, her father would talk about the desperate need for housing. Listening to her father talk about the housing crisis and need for architects made an impression on Lari. On a family visit to London when she was 15, she applied to architecture school at Oxford Brookes University. She laughs as she recalls her bravery.
At age 83, Yasmeen Lari is still full of ideas about zero-carbon designs, skills building and self-sustaining villages. "Architects can no longer work for just the one percent," she says. "That doesn't allow them to serve humanity as much as they could."
