Webinar: Barefoot Social Architecture with Yasmeen Lari

Megawra|BEC has the pleasure to invite you to join a webinar with Yasmeen Lari, the winner of the Jane Drew Prize for Architecture in 2020. Yasmeen Lari is Pakistan’s first female architect and the founder of Heritage Foundation of Pakistan. Her lecture, entitled “Barefoot Social Architecture”, will be followed by a question and answer session and a discussion on the potential for future collaboration with Egyptian practitioners.

Yasmeen Lari will share her professional journey – from leading figure in mainstream architecture to a passionate practitioner and advocate for zero-carbon, socially responsible, architecture. Lari has devised various programs based on women-centered zero carbon footprint structures and sustainable building techniques, resulting in 40,000 green shelters (using bamboo, lime and mud). She is also the co-founder of Heritage Foundation of Pakistan for safeguarding Pakistan’s cultural heritage and has conserved several historical monuments and heritage sites.

The webinar will be held via Zoom on Saturday the 21st of November, from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm Cairo time (2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Pakistan time). It will be in English.

For registration, click here.

Schedule:

– Introduction and welcome note: 11:00 – 11:10

– Lecture by Yasmeen Lari: 11:10 – 11:50

– Questions and answers: 11:50 – 12:10

– Discussion on potential for future for 12:10 – 12:30

About Yasmeen Lari:

Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan’s first female architect, is also a humanitarian and heritage conservationist. She graduated from Oxford Brookes University in 1963. She has built several landmarks buildings in Pakistan and is considered among pioneers of Brutalist Architecture. After retiring in 2000, she has been engaged in heritage management, humanitarian architecture. She is the founder of Barefoot Social Architecture, and Barefoot Incubator for Social Good and Environmental Sustainability devised to empower marginalized sections of society. She is best known as a proponent of zero carbon footprint conceptions that are drawn from vernacular traditions and incorporate tenets of social and ecological justice. She is the recipient of Jane Drew Prize 2020, Fukuoka Prize 2016, and national awards Hilal-i-Imtiaz (2014) and Sitara-i-Imtiaz (2006).

The webinar is hosted by Megawra|BEC, Arch-Verses, and Amaken (Placemaking for Arab World) in collaboration with the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan and in partnership with the architecture departments of Ain Shams University (ASU), the Arab Academy for Science and Technology (AASTMT), the British University in Egypt (BUE) and Nile University (NU), in addition to Takween Integrated Community Development, Benaa Habitat, Handover, and Living Building Challenge Collaborative (Cairo, Egypt). We are also grateful to the architecture departments of the American University in Cairo (AUC), Alexandria University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Misr International University (MIU), Suez Canal University, and Cairo University for participation and their support in disseminating the event.