repair architecture yasmeen lari
Architect Jasmine LarryHis practice is guided by the belief that design can help people rebuild their world with the materials, skills and knowledge already around them. Opposite bamboo shelters, earthen stoves, heritage conservation, community centers and flood houses, Pakistani architect has formulated a set of projects that he faces softness as an action. It is a way of reducing harm, sharing power and leveraging architecture for climate resilience, social dignity and collective repair.
In the designboom interview in 2025 from the Venice Architecture Biennale (read here), Lari described her bamboo community center for Qatar as “very welcoming,” while also fitting it into a broader eco-ethic: “it’s time to take care of the earth.The phrase is simple, but within her work it carries weight.
For Lari, planning starts with the needs of people displaced, underserved, or left to rebuild after a climate disaster. It also extends beyond human comfort to a larger network of materials, land, animals, water and repair.
Yasmeen Lari at the Qatar Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale, May 2025. image © designboom
from modernism to humanitarian practice
His career architect Yasmeen Lari has been through many seasons. Born in Pakistan in 1941, she studied architecture in the UK, returned to Karachi at 23 and founded Lari Associates with her husband, Suhail Zaheer Lari.
Her early practice included housing, commercial buildings and urban projects, while her long-standing study of Pakistan’s historic cities and earthen traditions led to the founding of the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan in 1980.
After retiring from conventional practice in 2000, she turned her attention to humanitarian work, especially after the 2005 earthquake and later floods in Pakistan. Since then, its architecture has become a system of shared knowledge, with communities trained to build with indigenous techniques, local labor and low-carbon materials.
The shift is radical because it places architectural skills where they are often held back: in villages, disaster zones, kitchens, courtyards, and self-built settlements.
The Juliet Center, Yasmeen Lari with Nyami Studio, Pono Village, Sindh, Pakistan. Image courtesy of Nyami Studio
barefoot social architecture
Yasmeen Lari calls this approach Barefoot Social Architecture or BASA. It is a design philosophy based on co-construction, local materials, carbon reduction and self-reliance. Bamboo, mud, lime, straw, terracotta and palm become tools of dignity as well as structures. The hand of the architect remains present, though it works through instructions, prototypes, training manuals and systems that can be replicated by the people who need them.
When he received the 2023 RIBA Royal Gold Medal (read here), Larry framed the recognition as a positive shift in the profession itself: ‘RIBA and the Awards Committee have heralded a new direction for the profession, encouraging all architects to focus not just on the privileged but on humanity at large suffering from inequality, conflict and climate change.
‘There are countless opportunities to apply the principles of circular economy, degrowth, transition planning, ecological urbanism and what we call Barefoot Social Architecture (BASA) to achieve climate resilience, sustainability and ecological justice in the world.‘
bamboo mosques designed for dismantling at Islamic Arts Biennale, Saudi Arabia, 2023. Image courtesy of Islamic Arts Biennale
bamboo as shelter and social structure;
This ethos is visible in the Lari Octa Green emergency shelters developed through the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan (read here). The octagonal bamboo structures, lined with palm trees and finished with conical thatched roofs, were created for flood relief and emergency reconstruction. Their geometry is direct and legible, allowing the system to be assembled quickly, while offering more spatial grace than a temporary enclosure would normally provide.
The shelters also show how Larry treats resilience as a social condition. A family gains room, but also access to a building method that can be taught, adapted and repaired. In this sense, shelter is both an object and a directive. It provides protection while passing along a form of agency, which may be the most important material in her work.
Lari Octa Green (LOG) Emergency Shelters, Pakistan, 2022. Image courtesy of Heritage Foundation of Pakistan
rebuilding after a flood
Its ambitions increased in scale after the devastating 2022 floods in Pakistan, which displaced millions of people and damaged or destroyed huge numbers of homes. Through the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, Lari set out to support the construction of flood-proof houses using raised platforms, bamboo structures, lime-stabilized mud walls, thatched roofs, raised hand pumps, eco-toilets and Pakistan Chulah stoves.
While her work is gentle in its materials, it is firm in its politics. It rejects the idea that contingency architecture should be crude, imported or disposable. A low cost room can still have proportion. A stove can change health and work by gender. A raised base can be the difference between a repeat loss and a safer return after the water recedes.
Lari Octa Green (LOG) Emergency Shelters, Pakistan, 2022. Image courtesy of Heritage Foundation of Pakistan
the kitchen as a climatic infrastructure
Pakistan Chulah, Lari’s raised earthen kitchen, extends the scale of design into the household. It reduces smoke, lifts cooking off the ground, improves hygiene and can be made with local materials. Within its larger context, the stove carries the same architectural intelligence as a pavilion or shelter. It changes posture, air, work, safety and social pride.
This attention to domestic infrastructure gives her work its emotional power, as it does not treat architecture as an isolated building, finished at the edge of its walls. Her practice moves to water points, toilets, cooking platforms, shaded terraces, workshops and community rooms. Each part supports another. Each piece makes survival stronger and more dignified.
