By Azra Dawood

Karachi changes fast. I, like most expatriates, visit home intermittently. And this makes the changes and developments in the city and its citizens that much more pronounced. Of all the developments that I have noticed, the most significant one has been the citizens’ growing awareness and appreciation of Karachi’s old edifices. And if one hasn’t been around to see it take shape, this development can seem sudden and surprising. But in reality it has been a slow, difficult process. And one that in its beginning phases, involved only a small handful of professionals interested in urban matters, heritage and architecture. Perhaps the most prominent person in this group is the architect Yasmeen Lari. Her persistent efforts over the past decade or so, slowly built momentum and eventually snowballed into a wider, larger public awareness of the city’s heritage – something that was simply not there before.

When talking about Yasmeen Lari, one can’t help but mention that she is Pakistan’s first female architect. But as Mrs. Lari will say herself, ‘Somebody had to be the first!’ This does not of course make her accomplishments in the field any less significant. Her career as a confident, bold female architect designing some of Karachi’s most recognizable buildings, such as the Finance and Trade Center, the Naval Officers’ Housing, PSO House and ABN-AMRO Bank, has been well documented in past interviews.

But the built works are only one accomplishment in a multi-faceted career in architecture. Mrs. Lari actually gave up her professional practice in 2001 with the intention of focusing exclusively on her research and writing. But in her objective to be solely focused on this work, she was unexpectedly thwarted by demands of other equally worthy endeavors. UNESCO approached her to supervise work on the Lahore Fort. In Karachi, citizens asked for her guidance and support as they initiated Karavan Karachi to raise awareness of the city’s heritage. And then in 2005, came the earthquake in Muzaffarabad. And she became involved in the rebuilding efforts.

This interview focuses on her impressive efforts to preserve and promote Karachi’s heritage, and her contributions to the rebuilding efforts in the earthquake-affected areas.

Mrs. Lari was generous with her time, forthright in her responses, and endlessly patient with my many questions. She welcomed my mother and me to her home in Karachi where I interviewed her this January. While several months have passed since the interview, I cannot think of a more relevant time than the present to post this article. After the recent violence in Karachi, it is a good time to be reminded of our shared heritage and of how pride in the physical fabric of the city might lead to mending and healing in other areas.

Yasmeen Lari: The whole idea was to give up architecture so that my husband and I could concentrate on our books. But after I did this in 2000, something called Karavan Karachi started as a result of the Karachi heritage guidebook that I had written. With the start of Karavan, there was a lot of really hectic work, because we were trying to bring about awareness of Karachi’s heritage. People believed there was nothing in Karachi. And as you know we had done all this research for the guidebook proving otherwise. So the idea was to see how a general awareness and knowledge about Karachi’s heritage could be spread all around the city. The mechanism that we adopted was to go and sit out in the streets in front of the historic buildings. So in 2000 - almost that whole year - we were out every Sunday celebrating one heritage building or the other with festivals, parades and speeches.

We worked a lot with children. They became our mainstay whenever there was an event. They were up there talking about heritage or the environment and that of course was very good because I think somehow people listen more to that. Plus, the awareness amongst children is very valuable. After a couple of years of this, I got involved with UNESCO.

AD: How did you get involved with UNESCO?

YL: They wrote to me and said they would like me to work on a report on cultural tourism in Lahore and Peshawar. At that time I was very busy and I was not sure I could commit. But they pursued me and I finally said yes and met the director who is a good person and became a very good friend as well and so we did the report. I co-authored it with another consultant who had come from Hong Kong. There were several other experts involved as well. After this report, UNESCO took up a project at the Lahore Fort and again approached me but I wasn’t sure because it was a big commitment to keep on traveling to Lahore.

AD: What year was this in?

YL: This was in 2003. They asked me to become their national advisor, which I eventually did. I went and stayed for quite some time at the Lahore Fort to work on the project. We managed to save the Shish Mahal ceiling and to record the master plan. We started a documentation procedure which was quite unique … it had never been done anywhere before, anywhere in the world actually to that kind of degree of detail. Shish Mahal is a very special building with a very special set of problems and we documented not only it but also a lot of buildings around it. The good thing was that we managed to train people from the Federal Department of Architecture who could continue with the work.

I was in Lahore for three years. We finished the whole thing in December of 2005 and last year in 2006 we handed over the project to the Punjab Government. I am now in the steering committee of the Fort and the Shalimar Gardens. It was quite an interesting challenge. And of course I have been working on a book for the Lahore fort as well.

AD: And so it all tied in really well.

YL: I think one of the reasons I went there is because I thought I would get a little bit more information – which I did. Normally government departments don’t let in on what records they have, but through this project we found old drawings and made copies. We found glass lights with old photographs and again got all the copies done. The deal was we said that whatever we do should be accessible to everybody. It should not be hidden in any way.

AD: If I remember correctly, you’ve had the idea for the Lahore Fort book for a while. Am I right? Or did the idea for the book come about after UNESCO approached you for their particular project?

YL: No I had been working on the book for a while. My husband Sohail had done the photography in the 1980s. And so we probably had the best record of the picture wall as well as other structures and the manuscript has been there for the longest time. But I haven’t had time to get it published. Karavan Karachi started. And then the Lahore Fort Project with UNESCO.

UNESCO said, ‘Just come and overlook the whole thing…come once or twice.’ And of course when we started there was just so much to do! But yes, the book had been there all along. It needs to now be finalized.

In the meantime I have also worked on a heritage guide for Lahore. After I finished working on Karachi: The Dual City, the idea was to do a companion volume on Lahore and so I did all the research. We documented and catalogued 800 buildings in the city of Lahore.

AD: How many buildings did you catalog in Karachi?

YL: Over 600. And we just started the cleaning of Denso Hall – slowly removing all the filth. We have developed a plan for it and are now implementing it.

AD: What is the plan for Denso Hall?

YL: Well I have had lots of different plans for the city of Karachi on the whole. I wanted to declare several conservation districts. Things haven’t happened quite in the way that I wanted but we’ve made some developments. Yesterday the Hamara Karachi festival started and that’s focusing on heritage. My sister happens to be the Naib Nazim and so that’s helping in the sense that she’s taken up the whole thing about culture and heritage. Usually there are a lot of issues with government buildings but they are willing to help us out. There’s no funding coming in from the city but for us the most important thing is that at least someone lets us do these things.

Now that I have started cleaning Denso Hall I know exactly how to organize things. There are a few problems with the pavements. People use them and you have to think of how to do it so you don’t disrupt their daily activity. And then there are problems with the building itself … all kinds of layers of paint and graffiti and pan ki peek and God knows what all on the building. It’s unbelievable! And on the backside of the building, Merriott Road is totally filled up with garbage. I have always thought that Merriott Road should become a pedestrian street. And so I am talking to the city government and we are seeing how it can become that and also a historical street.

AD: What is Denso Hall being used for at the moment?

YL: It used to be a library, a reading room and a hall and that’s how it was designed and then they set up these government offices, which are in terrible condition right now.

I have not found drawings of Denso Hall. Even if there are drawings they just get lost or misplaced. I want to preserve it properly. So we want to do an existing condition survey so we can see what we need to do to preserve it.

First we clean it. The next step is to find alternate accommodations for the government officers. And then we will see how we can convert it back into what it was intended for. If the cleaning can get done you will be able to see how beautiful these historic buildings are. Right now they are so dirty and there’s really no reason for them to be this way. I just want to assemble a fire brigade and have them hose down the whole building!

AD: Do you have problems with funding?

YL: Well, I always start with zero funding. We never have money. But somehow through divine intervention paths open up to us. We start whatever we have to and then from somewhere we get a hold of someone who is willing to fund. I have been talking about Denso Hall for a long time and the other day I was just sitting there with Nokia people discussing the earthquake zone and I mentioned how in Karachi we wanted to start the cleaning of Denso Hall. One of the Nokia guys said, ‘We could help in that’. So I said ‘Fine, by all means help!’ So he came here to see and when he realized how bad the condition was, he took pity on the building and said ‘Ok, you get it started’. If we tried to find money, well that would be really hard, in the sense that I don’t have the time in my life to go look for money first. Whatever funds we can get, we’ll use them and we’ll adjust what we want to do or can do accordingly. If there’s no money we just get it done anyway.

AD: Who’s doing the work on Denso Hall? Are they volunteers?

YL: No, this is paid labor. And generally I am supervising. I come back from the earthquake areas and then I go everyday to see what is happening. We don’t have any architects anymore who can supervise the work because they don’t see their career path here. In the past I would be designing buildings so I had architects working for me and then on the side I would make them work on heritage as well. And now that I don’t have architectural projects, I don’t have architects. In Lahore I did have a very good person who worked on the Lahore Fort.

AD: Let’s talk for a moment about your architecture practice. Although you are not pursuing it anymore, you were very successful in it and are very well known as a result of it. What was it like being an architect here in Pakistan?

YL: The advantage of working in a developing country is that you have the possibility of working at many different levels, which is not something that is offered to you elsewhere. It just depends on how interested you are in doing other things but you can if you want to.

I never wanted to have a large office so I was lucky because I could limit myself to a few projects. I was lucky I got the projects that I got and mostly I enjoyed them except for a few and there were never really many to begin with. It’s different from other architects who have done numerous buildings. I didn’t do that many and I didn’t want to do that many and that meant that there were times when there was no work at all. You had to decide whether you wanted to pursue a lot of projects to keep busy, which would have meant having a large office and then making sure you always had projects in the pipeline to keep the office busy even in the future. To me it’s a vicious cycle, but for some, I am sure it is something they like doing.

But I was very lucky. In Bahawalpur I built mud buildings. I worked on squatter settlements long before anyone had ever thought about it. So there was all this that I was able to dabble in if you like. My main interest obviously was always to design buildings but then in simpatico I was also able to do the research and heritage work. The two interests had always been there. I was able to start all my research work mainly because of my husband. He wanted to write and encouraged me to do the same. In the beginning it was really hard because you know I used to lose my references. Always! Couldn’t figure out where they went! When I was studying in England I was never asked to write. Maybe it’s changed now but then the focus wasn’t on writing.

AD: Karavan Karachi started in 2003 sometime after you had closed up your architectural practice. What is it all about and how did it start?

Karavan is all volunteers. What happened was that my guidebook had come out. And there was this young woman Fariya, who had come and volunteered. She heard I was working with UNESCO. She’s actually a graphic designer. She came one day and said, ‘Can I do something?’ I said, ‘Fine. I am doing this guidebook for Lahore and you can help with that.’ Fariya is a very good photographer. And she came with us to Lahore. And then of course this Karachi guidebook came out and Fariya was a part of that too. After the guidebook came out, a journalist called Mohsin walked in one day and said, ‘Your book has come out and there’s apparently so much in Karachi and we should do something about it.’ I said, ‘Ok, then do something. You guys do it. I will give backup support as needed.’ I was basically just focused on my books. But then I started to invite people for coffee and the whole thing just grew … right in this room.

One evening they all sat down and made all these charts that you see here in my office about what we could do to raise awareness and they came up with the idea of a festival. We had so many volunteers. I don’t know where they were turning up from! But we did it and we had nothing and we had no money. Things just evolved very naturally. I mentioned the roads and that we should sit out there and someone said ‘Yasmeen, you are crazy. How can you go sit out on the streets the way the situation is in the city?’ I said, ‘We want to do this. Otherwise what’s the point?’ And we did it and totally surprised everyone.

People just talk about how heritage brings about cohesion. But we actually proved it during the Karavan functions. All kinds of people would participate. Men with long beards and women who would come from God knows what areas with their children. I never saw a single case of any fighting or conflict during this. The more you get to know about each other the less you are likely to fight.

We would never advertise or hold a press conference. But people would just come and there was no divide. And that was the time Karachi was really in the throes of violence and no one really believed that all this could be done. But then Muhammad Mian Soomro (former Governor of Sindh) always said that Karavan actually normalized the city, which is true because we were out there. No matter what happened in the city, we stuck to our agenda.

AD: It gives people something else to focus on and be proud of.

YL: Of course. You can’t just sit back and hide and say the conditions are so bad and there’s nothing we can do. We have this city we should all be proud of and we should do everything possible that we can to improve the situation. The Karavan experience has been very eye opening for me because after being a part of it my ego has become completely zero! I was sitting out on the streets with everyone. I used to think I was such a zabardast thing! And then there I was, sitting with everyone on the street. Everyone can relate to heritage. It’s an equalizer … not just people who are educated or who are well off. Now you can make me sit anywhere and ask me to do anything and it’s fine.

Karavan Karachi’s latest assignment is to research every community in the city, like the Parsis, Bohras, Kucchis, Memons and all the rest, because finally Karachi’s biggest strength – and this is what Karavan has been all about – is to show that Karachi has this tremendous strength of this diverse community and we should be proud of it.

The focus of this latest research is not so much on the physical neighborhoods but more on their traditions, history and folklore. I would like to have a dossier on every community and its stories. Shehnaz Ramzi the famous journalist can write about cuisine. And there’s Adil… who has done so much street theater. So there are all these talented people who want to contribute to our city and to our work.

AD: I noticed a huge change between now and when I was growing up here. A dozen years ago there was not much general awareness and no real community wide effort. And now when you come back to Karachi you can see the difference and sense the pride.

YL: No one really knew until my book came out that anything of value existed here. No one had ever given a second thought to heritage. But because the book had solid work it succeeded in its own right. I think the greatest success was with the children. I would meet them and they would say ‘Oh this building is in our neighborhood and it’s important and we didn’t even know it’. We got thinkers, writers and celebrities who would come and talk about heritage. For example Jamiluddin Ally Sahib, Bajiha and Pirzada Qasim. And somebody got hold of Nadeem the actor and he was standing there at Cantonment railway station talking about heritage. We drew up a report on Mohatta Palace. We said it needs funding and it should be restored. We saved the Hindu Gymkhana 3 times from being destroyed. I remember Illahi Baksh Soomro calling me and saying ‘Yasmeen, what are you doing? You don’t realize how valuable the land is here.’ It has been gradual steps. And now the city government is itself talking about it. The more buildings we can save the better. But even now people are tearing down these buildings. If you go into these areas you’ll see the façade standing but on the inside they are actually tearing down the building.

AD: They just do it overnight, especially for the smaller buildings.

YL: Absolutely! You see there is a lot of money involved. We campaigned to have a law passed in 1994 called Sindh Cultural Heritage Preservation Act of 1994. I spoke with the Chief Minister at that time – Abdullah Shah of PPP – and then he took up the cause and we got the law through. A committee was created and I was in it for about 4 years. But then I resigned because I found that they wanted to denotify and I am not willing to sit in a committee, which is denotifying. They would say, ‘Yasmeen Lari made us protect these buildings at gunpoint but there’s nothing in them.’ And so I resigned.

AD: What happened to the committee?

YL: Its still there. We had these buildings notified and the thing to do would have been to see how you could get funding to save them and not how to denotify them.

AD: Maybe to see how you could retrofit them and use them.

YL: Exactly. Why denotify? They would say, ‘It's in terrible condition. It looks bad. Let’s just have it torn down’. Anyhow, now it’s in the public domain and the citizens should take up the cause.

AD: Which is of course now happening.

YL: Yes, but we need to have more of it. Now we are celebrating 75 years of the KMC building for example and that’s good progress.

Is the 'Hamara Karachi' festival on the 13th and 14th of January for the KMC Building?

YL: They’re doing a number of things. The city government said that whoever wants to celebrate can do it however they want to. So the events are not uniform throughout. When asked, I said we want to do a children’s festival at KMC.

AD: Aside from the UNESCO projects, your books and Karavan Karachi, you have lately been working in the earthquake-affected areas. How did you get involved and what exactly are you doing there?

YL: I was in Lahore when the earthquake struck and one didn’t know what to do. I went to the site – I had never been there before. We thought about how we could contribute as architects. So we started to develop design and construction ideas for the rebuilding effort. What’s interesting is that I was asked to meet with General Nadeem [Deputy of the Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority (ERRA)]. And I don’t know why because I was not a part of a large NGO. I had gone in there with no money and very little manpower. I was at a meeting which was attended by the President and I got up and said, ‘Mr. President, I am very concerned because there are all these alien forms that are being built. And they are totally disastrous.’ So he suggested that I meet with General Nadeem. And General Nadeem said ‘ Well how do you want do build these homes?’ And there were all these ambitious designs by various architects there and I said we want to use choona (lime). And he said ‘Very novel idea. How did you come to think of choona?’ And I said, ’Well the Moguls were using it 400 years ago so there’s nothing novel about it!’ We worked through the winter and built about 1100 units and we had no money mind you. Our volunteers had nothing and they went and lived in tents because we didn’t believe in taking out ijtihars. The money was not the issue. The issue was what are we going to do when we get there.

We decided that we would help the people rebuild their communities and homes, but we would not do it all by ourselves for them.

Unfortunately since the earthquake, because everyone has been given free things, people have become supplicants. So our attitude has been whatever you want to do, you do it yourself. We will help you, but you have to be involved.

For me the issue is how do you foster pride amongst people? There are several reasons why people don’t feel confident. There is the earthquake and its trauma and the whole thing about having to take handouts and the government saying that you should rebuild in new ways, such as using concrete. So the villagers think there is no value in their old way of doing things. I think our job is to try and give them confidence about it and a sense of pride. You know, ‘What is yours is quite good’. And so that’s what I have been working on. Why are we saying they must use steel, they must use concrete? There are perfectly good ways in which they had built before and things had survived. So the whole thing for us should be to see what could be done to improve on vernacular technology. Don’t impose things. I believe that things should be kept in their context.

And keeping this in mind, we are also setting up a heritage museum on one of the sites there and making artisan workshops. We have documented and catalogued all local crafts and heritage assets. We’ve found men who do amazing stonework and pottery. There are very few of them left, so if we establish these workshops then perhaps they can work here. The aim is to see how we can sustain these crafts, which would otherwise die.

We have been working a lot with children there. Since April of last year there have been several groups of volunteers that have come to help out: architects, designers and students from the School of Architecture in Glasgow, from Ireland, Iran, the American University at Sharjah, Louisiana State University, National College of Arts and from Abbottabad. We also got some from Karachi but not all that many. Lalarukh who is the head of the Fine Arts department at NCA has been running workshops about photography and painting. We’ve done theater with the children and arranged for them to sing and to dance so these kids now…their eyes are shining. They’ve gotten over their trauma.

The local women have responded extremely well too. The GOC there said, ‘Yasmeen, you are trying to work with the women here, but these women don’t even step out of their houses, so how are they going to participate?’ So I sent out an invitation to the women of the area, and the day we had our meeting, 150 women turned up. Some had walked for two hours. They said, ‘You called and so we came.’

We discussed various ways of generating income for them. We helped to start a cottage industry revolving around beadwork. They said they wanted sewing machines. I have got a friend Justice Nasira Iqbal who is constantly asking me if I need funds for the work that we’re doing. And I said to her, ‘I don’t need anything, just send me sewing machines!’ So now we keep asking her for sewing machines and she keeps on sending them to us. We have opened about 20 centers where these women are producing beadwork.

They make bracelets and we market them as ‘Destiny Bracelets’. We opened the workshops in the middle of June. The first payment I made was at the end of June for two weeks work. I paid them Rs. 360. Last month for two week’s work I paid Rs. 25,600. So this is how the whole thing has grown. We’re trying to see how we can market the products abroad. 100 percent of the money goes back into the cottage industry.

AD: Do you have some of this beadwork here? Can I see it?

YL: Sure. [Reaches behind her chair and produces a beautiful silk clutch with a bracelet inside]. We have done a lot of packaging. Mrs. Yusuf does all the color coordination. We sell them for Rs. 200. We exhibited these in Islamabad on October 8th. And there was this woman who had come from Finland – her name was Ricarda. She said, ‘However many you have, just sent them to me.’ I had 1200 and I sent them all and they’ve all been sold. So that’s how we’ve been doing this, slowly and steadily. Although now the number of bracelets being produced is huge. I am a bit worried about distributing and selling them all off. So we’re trying to create linkages. I don’t think we should get involved in trying to put them into shops. I would really like to do it in a manner where we have 50 or 100 and someone takes them and disposes them off. Take them and sell them and give the money back to us.

AD: Why don’t you want to get directly involved in marketing the bracelets?

YL: I want the marketing of the bracelets to go the e-marketing way. I am a fellow of Asoka. They are now teaming up with Market Village. This has to do with developing countries. And we are getting emails from them about marketing and participating with the program. I am trying to limit how much we do because we don’t want to get to a situation where we have a lot of orders coming in and we can’t fill them.

Katrina Hussain, who is a famous journalist, suggested that I should get a hold of young women who have linkages with their old colleges abroad. She suggested that we could put up posters in college bookstores and have Pakistani girls volunteering to sell these bracelets for 5 dollars.

AD: I think you could do this very easily.

YL: I think there’s still another year when you can get people’s attention. I thought I should take this one year and establish the ‘Destiny Bracelet’ as a product of the earthquake area. My main concern is that the beadwork should not turn into a Jumma Bazaar product. It’s very important that it not become that. Secondly if we take it as a high-end product there’s a problem with that because I know the quality is not very high. But it is a one of a kind product. No two are the same. Also, it has been done by women who have gone through this trauma. So it has these unique strengths. If you look at the particular beadwork, you can feel that it’s different somehow from other beadwork. Other things might be a bit more mechanical because they are doing it for a commercial market.

You don’t know how we are operating. We don’t have a proper office there. I wanted to see how we could keep operating and overhead costs down. And we decided that all people coming in from outside to work are volunteers, but everyone from the area working on this gets paid. Now we have decided to have a set-up in Battal. We found a half-destroyed house but with a beautiful view and a forest in the back. We have got it for Rs. 10,000 a month and we are renovating it at a reasonable cost. We will use it to conduct workshops and to house our volunteers. Slowly things are falling into place. We are going to build centers where the women can come and work and where we can sort the work and look at the quality. But right now we are just saying, ‘Bas dingay mat banao!’ Just make them as straight as you can! But a time will come when we’ll have to say that the quality should be better and then once it is, perhaps boutiques can be encouraged to place orders. We have tried a number of different product lines but I have come to the conclusion that we should do only one thing. Destiny Bracelet is fine. Our tagline is ‘Recrafting Destiny.’

I think in the final analysis it is making a lot of difference. The women are actually quite confident now.

AD: There were many events in NY related to earthquake relief this past year. And there are always fundraising events for other relief and development work. You can sell these bracelets there and in other cities very easily, because this is still very much in people’s awareness. If I or anyone else wanted to get these from you, how would we arrange that?

YL: I would just send them via courier. It’s not just sale, it’s also awareness of the situation and what they can produce.

I come here and go to Sindh club and there no one has any idea. They are all just sitting in a different world. I think it’s very easy to forget. People are busy with their lives. So we just have to give them reminders and then they act. I dissuade people from just giving money. I would rather they bought this so it also remains as a reminder to them. You give money and you forget. But if you buy something like this and it stays with you, then you will always remember.

There’s so much poverty in those villages and so much illiteracy that you can’t imagine. People keep asking me, ‘Why are you still there?’ And why am I? I thought I would work for 4 months there and I would be back in Karachi but now it’s been 14 months and I don’t see myself pulling out for another year. You go and you can’t just leave them and come back, such is their condition. I feel like I have no choice.

Select bibliography of Yasmin Lari's work:

Traditional Architecture of Thatta (published by the Heritage Foundation, 1989)
The Dual City: Karachi During the Raj (w/ Mihail S. Lari. Published by the Heritage Foundation and Oxford University Press, 1996)
The Jewel of Sindh: Samma Monuments on Makli Hill (with Suhail Z. Lari, published by the Heritage Foundation and Oxford University Press, 1997)
Karachi Tourist Guide.