With the world’s first monographic exhibition on Yasmeen Lari, the Architekturzentrum Wien shows an exemplary position that evidences an architecture for the future. As Pakistan’s first female architect, Yasmeen Lari (1941) designed iconic modernist buildings before initiating a zero-carbon self-build movement for climate refugees and the landless. The exhibition Yasmeen Lari: Architecture for the Future uses Lari’s oeuvre as an example to show how the relationship of architecture to the future has changed and continues to evolve.

“We have to rethink everything, and we have to do it now,” states the over 80-year-old architect. The exhibition shows Lari’s exceptional trajectory from her modernist beginnings in the 1960s to her present-day humanitarian architecture based on decolonization and decarbonization. In 1964, she established her architectural office in Karachi, Pakistan. She designed internationally acclaimed houses and public housing estates, researched and rescued built heritage.

The aim of the exhibition Yasmeen Lari: Architecture for the Future is to contribute to a different understanding of architecture that cares for people and nature. Such a practice will find locally situated answers in specific contexts, from building differently with low-carbon materials or the circular economy, to no longer erecting new structures, and working with adaptive re-use.