Yasmeen Lari founded the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan in 1980 to preserve the country’s traditional architecture, and they have built some 85,000 structures for displaced Pakistanis, including victims of last year’s devastating monsoon rains.
That disaster left a third of the country underwater and destroyed more than 2.1 million homes, but the thousands of bamboo structures Lari’s group had erected “all survived,” she said.
Often the makeshift structures built in emergency situations are not built to last, and many disaster victims end up living in temporary encampments for years as they wait for more permanent dwellings to materialize. So Lari is building more bamboo homes, which are not disaster relief shelters, she insists, but disaster-resistant homes. “This country can’t afford the luxury of obsolescence,” said Lari, “Whatever we build must be long…
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