FUTURARC INTERVIEW
Sustainability can’t just be about materials; it has to be about social and ecological justice.
for the woman of the house whose position needs to be revered and respected by everyone in the family. Sustainability can’t just be about materials; it has to be about social and ecological justice.
In Pakistan, more people are talking about sustainability in a more holistic way. There is an increased awareness and concern about climate change, which was mostly missing in the last century. However, I feel we need to do more work to bring in the rights and well-being of the poor into our understanding of sustainability. Sustainability can’t be packaged as a product that is only accessible by the rich.
BJ: How has architecture evolved in your country over the past few decades since you have been back? YL: We have been struggling to find what Pakistani architecture means and what should the role of the architects be in the Pakistani society. For a really long time we were heavily influenced by the West, and to a certain degree, we still are. We were building recklessly and thought that architecture was these massive shiny buildings. I have designed and built a number of reckless buildings in the last century. Nobody really cared about sustainability nor took any inspiration from traditional or vernacular architecture. You would see arches or domes being added on buildings to make them appear ‘Islamic’, which in my opinion is ‘instant Islamic’ where you aren’t learning from the past but simply plagiarising it.
Another struggle has been the architectural education that only teaches you to build for the rich because that is how you can get the resources to build something extraordinary. However, I strongly feel that architects are supposed to serve humanity rather than their own or their client’s egos. Architecture is and has to be more than one man’s ego. This realisation is slowly seeping into the architectural fraternity, specially the young crop of architects who are more aware of the challenges of climate change and socio- economic inequities. The change is not at the pace I would like, but it is happening. The current pandemic has also forced us to rethink everything we took for granted and we simply can’t go on believing that we have every resource and every material at our disposal.
BJ: What prompted you to leave your highly successful practice where you had made quite a name for yourself by building these mega structures—which you call ‘reckless’ buildings—and start building with earth? YL: I think it is one of the best decisions of my life and it was inspired by my husband who decided to sell off his business and become a full-time historian and writer. I simply didn’t find meaning in engaging with rich people, so I decided to retire and write books. However, Pakistan was hit by a massive earthquake in 2005, which actually changed my trajectory. The earthquake caused unprecedented damage to life and property, but it also got the country together. We were receiving help from all over the world and everybody was trying to help in some way or the other. I decided to go for a couple months but didn’t realise how a couple of months became a couple of years. It was a really humbling experience for someone like who had always been sheltered and cocooned in a make-believe world of wealth and privilege. I had no idea about how most of my country people lived and built with limited resources, and how giving and generous they continued to be in the face of such a catastrophic disaster. It made me question my practice and the role of architecture in the society in a way that it was impossible for me to go back to my old ‘reckless’ ways.
FUTURARC 25
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