Architect Yasmeen Lari Builds Bamboo Relief Shelters For Pakistan's Flooded Areas

Pakistan is currently witnessing the most severe floods in its history. Reportedly, the widespread floods have directly impacted around 33 million people and demolished over one million homes. Amid this grave flooding, Pakistan's architect Yasmeen Lari, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, has been working towards the relief cause for the people affected. She has been building bamboo houses for flood-affected citizens.

Yasmeen Lari, 81, is the first female architect in Pakistan. She is currently on a mission to build shelters for victims of the flood eroded country.

Most of the lowland in Pakistan has been underwater at one point or another since June this year. Sindh, one of the hardest-hit provinces in the country, placed a dire need of about one million tents to shelter people displaced by the floods. Talking to a magazine and further discussing her initiative at an architecture school talk for flood relief, Lari shared that, considering the request for tents, she got an idea for her low-cost, low-carbon bamboo conical shelters. "Because there weren't enough tents and tents are not durable, the concept of building these bamboo shelters popped up in mind after careful consideration," she shared. She emphasised that these can be disassembled and transported. The same basic components may be reused to create more permanent constructions.

Suggested reading: 6.5 lakh Pregnant Women Affected In Flood-Hit Pakistan: UNFPA

Yasmeen Lari Builds Relief Shelters For Pakistan Flood

Lari claimed how she had begun utilising bamboo in a refugee camp long back. "There was nothing else. It took too long to obtain bricks. I saw, there was Bamboo and thought we could give it a shot."

Lari has worked for flood reliefs in the past too. In 2010, during similar circumstances, she assisted in constructing thousands of these bamboo huts, which had the USP of being moved around as per the situation. "These endured floods in 2012 and 2013 and some were even raised on bamboo stilts," she recalled.

Lari, who maintains a training centre for emergency architecture called Zero-Carbon Campus, has supervised all the designs which have been enhanced with pre-fabricated bamboo panels that can be easily connected with a rope to assist the push for widespread adoption of such an idea for emergency purposes.

Lari spent the majority of her career working on high-rise buildings and sleek glass-and-steel structures. However, following a devastating earthquake in 2005, she began to assist with relief work and helping people displaced owing to natural calamities. She started reconstruction using local materials and techniques that people could utilise themselves. In her work at the Zero-Carbon Campus, Lari has been teaching women how to build bamboo shelters. She is now working with her foundation to spread formation on building bamboo-based shelters that can assist people during natural calamities.

The strong monsoon rain, which eventually led to flooding, has been affecting the country to a larger level causing around 1,136 deaths, according to reports. The government proclaimed a national emergency on August 25.