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Oliver Wainwright on RIBA's '100 Women: Architects in Practice,' a new primer for industry-wide change

2024-02-29T13:40:00-05:00

We’re not there yet. In an industry where the gender pay gap has widened in recent years, where all-male panels at conferences are not unusual, and where macho culture still prevails on building sites, a book like this, sadly, still has a place.

Writing for The Guardian, critic Oliver Wainwright says he hopes RIBA’s new publication 100 Women: Architects in Practice, which we previewed in December, will encourage competition judges, academic panels, awards juries, exhibitions organizers, and rebuke “the headhunters who claim women never apply, [...] the clients who say they just can’t find women with the right experience.”

Many of the architects included in the book, namely Mariam Kamara, Suhailey Farzana, and others, are women whose practices are informed by and in service to decolonization in the developing world à la the 2023 RIBA Gold Medal winner Yasmeen Lari and 2021 Soane Medalist Marina Tabassum. (The profiles are divided into 18 geographical "sub-regions" based on the UN's geoscheme.)

The 320-page book was written by Harriet Harriss, Naomi House, Monika Parrinder, and Tom Ravenscroft, with Alison Brooks responsible for the foreword.

RIBA honors 2023 Royal Gold Medal winner Yasmeen Lari with short documentary

2023-06-20T11:47:00-04:00

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has released a new short documentary feature honoring 2023 Royal Gold Medalist Yasmeen Lari following her acceptance of the award at a special presentation held last week in London.

The Pakastani-born architect was named the Gold Medal's 174th recipient in April. RIBA recognized Lari, also the first female architect to practice in the country, over her groundbreaking humanitarian and climate-sensitive designs, which showcase “how architecture changes lives for the better,” according to a statement made by President Simon Allford at the announcement.

The 82-year-old detailed her approach to sustainable and seismic design, including her four ‘Zeros’ and refusal to work with cement, steel, and corporate handouts. She also discusses her work with renewable materials such as bamboo, earth, and lime, as well as the role of craft, women designers, and the democratization of the profession in her ongoing architectural aspirations.

Previously ...

From corporate towers to humanitarian work, Yasmeen Lari reflects on her architectural career

2020-04-01T15:16:00-04:00

“I feel like I am atoning for some of what I did,” says Yasmeen Lari with an embarrassed chuckle. “I was a ‘starchitect’ for 36 years, but then my egotistical journey had to come to an end. It’s not only the right of the elite to have good design.”

Oliver Wainwright talks with Yasmeen Lari, who was named the 2020 Jane Drew Prize laureate earlier this year. She looks back on her architectural career, which began with designing glitzy corporate monuments and then switched to humanitarian work after the devastating 2005 Pakistan earthquake. She also shares what she's learned about disaster preparedness, how design has helped raise the status of women in Pakistan, and how she feels about winning the notable Jane Drew Prize.

Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan's first woman architect: "We need to democratize architecture"

2016-04-12T14:07:00-04:00

All of us, including myself have been engaged in catering to the 0.1 per cent through our work. Our training has always been in material and designing architecture for that one per cent. The kind of world we live in today, we need to democratise architecture. I know that it may give an impression that I am saying this only because I am retired now, but I have become deeply involved in how architecture can provide social justice and (grounds) for an equitable society.