New Currents: Yasmeen Lari and Marina TabassumNew Currents: Yasmeen Lari and Marina Tabassum

Yasmeen Lari is Pakistan’s first female architect and ‘architect for the poorest’. Her work on affordable, sustainable, zero-carbon housing and disaster-resilient buildings for marginalised communities is groundbreaking. Her ‘barefoot social architecture’ programme aims to create a zero-donor model to lift poor communities out of the poverty trap. She co-founded the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, which researches and preserves the country’s architectural heritage. In 2023, she received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for her humanitarian work.

Marina Tabassum is an architect and professor at Delft University of Technology. She founded Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA) in Dhaka, in 2005. She strives to create an architectural language that is both contemporary and strongly connected to the place, taking into account nature, climate, culture, history and the environment. Her quest for ‘architecture of relevance’ has won her several international awards.

• 19:00 Doors open
• 19:25 Welcome by the Nieuwe Instituut
• 19:30 Marina Tabassum: Architecture of Transition
• 20:00 Yasmeen Lari: The Global South Lens: Decolonise, Decarbonise, Democratise Architecture & Urbanism
• 20:30 Discussion and Q&A with the audience, moderated by Parvinder Marwaha
• 21:00 Closing remarks

This event is an initiative of New Currents in partnership with TU Delft.

New Currents is a Nieuwe Instituut research project that looks at the history, alliances and ideas around the Indian Ocean. What are the movements of people, goods and ideas, and what can they tell us about the future of the region?

EXTREME Architecture and EXTREME Technology are programmes in the master’s track of the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft. EXTREME focuses on integral design in extreme environments. The aim of this approach is to make students aware of their technical and architectural design choices.

The visit of Marina Tabassum and Yasmeen Lari is made possible by the International Visitors Programme of the Nieuwe Instituut with the support of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.