2023-05-23 15:16:04
Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan’s first female architect, developed weather-resistant houses floods for rural communities on the front line of climate change, with a motto: “Zero carbon, zero waste, zero donors” for “zero poverty”. Recognized 82-year-old architect, responsible for some of the most remarkable buildings in Karachisuch as the headquarters of the national oil company PSO, Yasmeen Lari now prefers to put her know-how at the service of the most vulnerable.
The “pilot” houses in bamboo She developed rescued families from record monsoon floods in the summer of 2022. A third of the country had been flooded, displacing eight million people across the country. With his foundation, the octogenarian, whose work has just been awarded the gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, hopes to extend the project to one million houses built by local communities in the most remote areas of the country.
Millions of homes destroyed
“I had to find the solution, or find a way to build people’s capacity so that they could manage on their own, rather than waiting for outside help. I don’t believe in charity, explains Yasmeen Lari, trained in the United Kingdom. Poverty-stricken Pakistan, the fifth most populous country in the world, is responsible for less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but is one of the countries most vulnerable to extreme weather events caused by the global warming. Millions of homes have been destroyed in successive natural disasters in recent years, from the 2005 earthquake to the 2010 floods.
Scientists say monsoons have become more abundant and unpredictable with the climate change, for which the country is poorly prepared. In the village of Pono Colony, about 200 kilometers from Karachi, the hundred pilot houses built before the exceptional floods of last summer have already proved their worth. The raised structure on which the houses rest allows water to rush under the floor thanks to bamboos anchored deep in the ground which resist the pressure.
thinking about chickens
Known locally as ‘chanwara’, these spherical mud huts are an upgraded version of the traditional one-piece houses that dot the landscapes of Pakistan’s southern Sindh province and India’s Rajasthan. . They only require locally available materials: lime, clay, bamboo and thatch. After fairly simple training, they can be assembled by families at a cost of around $170 and easily moved. “You can’t go with an inflated ego into a poor community and say, ‘I know what to do and I’ll tell you what to do’comments the architect, who used his experience.
During a project on the construction of social housing in Lahore (east) in the 1970s, the women of the district, leaning on its plans, had wondered where the hens were going to live, she recalls. “These hens have remained etched in my memory. The needs of women are really at the center of my concerns when I design projects”she insists.
New stove design
Today, it is no longer the chicken coop that is the focus, but the layout of the traditional stoves, which have been placed high up and equipped with a chimney to evacuate the smoke. “Previously, the stove was on the floor, which was very unhygienic. Small children burned themselves with the flames, stray dogs licked the pans and germs spread.explains Champa Kanji, trained by Ms. Lari’s team in building stoves for homes in Sindh.
“Seeing women become independent and have the means to do things gives me a lot of pleasure”, underlines the architect. In rural areas of this province, tens of thousands of people are still displaced and large agricultural areas remain submerged in stagnant water, nearly a year after the floods. In January, international donors pledged more than $9 billion to repair the damage done, but only a fraction of the money has been received, as Pakistan is plunged into a serious economic and political crisis.
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