About the Author

Angelika Fitz is a curator and writer and Director of Architekturzentrum Wien, the Austrian Architecture Museum in Vienna. Elke Krasny is a cultural theorist, urban researcher, and curator, and is Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Introducing a critical care perspective, Fitz and Krasny initiated a paradigm shift in architecture and urbanism. Marvi Mazhar is an architect and researcher based in Karachi, Pakistan.

SUMMARY

A rich exploration of the extraordinary life and work of celebrated architect Yasmeen Lari, winner of the 2023 RIBA Royal Gold Medal.

After more than three decades as a renowned global architect, Yasmeen Lari, the first woman to open her own architecture firm in Pakistan in 1964, developed Zero Carbon Architecture, which unites ecological and social justice. This volume, edited by Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny, and Marvi Mazhar, presents Lari’s trajectory from exemplary modernist to zero carbon revolutionary, with a focus on her remarkable contributions to the global architectural movement to decarbonize and decolonize. The book includes extensive photographs, drawings, and plans from Lari’s archive, most of which have not previously been shown or published.

Lari’s architectural thinking and activism have always gone beyond the quest for a singular built solution. Rather, she strategically plans systemic approaches and solutions, be it for housing, a heritage foundation, or zero-carbon shelters with communities at risk. Original essays from diverse international contributors contextualize Lari’s work; investigate architecture and the postimperial, postcolonial, and postpartition condition; and examine the intersections of architecture and human rights, climate change, decolonization, gender, care, activism, and vernacular innovation. More than a tribute to Yasmeen Lari’s extraordinary career, this volume brings her legacy forward and shows how to create change today.