Pakistan’s first woman architect and a pioneering force in sustainable architecture, Yasmeen Lari has refused Wolf Prize 2025 to show her support for Palestine.
She also declined to accept $100,000 prize money.
“I declined the award because of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a reason I explicitly stated in my response to them. Given the current situation in Gaza, accepting the award was out of the question,” she said.
Israel has blocked all aid into Gaza and cut off the electricity powering a water plant for Hamas to release Israel’s citizens but without committing to ending the war.
About Wolf Prize
The prestigious Israeli award, given annually since 1978, is often seen as a precursor to the Nobel Prize.
According to its website, the Wolf Prize is awarded annually and honours exceptional individuals who transcend barriers of religion, gender, race, geography, and political stance. In the scientific domain, the awards are conferred in Medicine, Agriculture, Mathematics, Chemistry, and Physics. In the arts, the awards recognise excellence in Painting and Sculpture, Music, and Architecture.
Along with Yasmeen, this year’s recipient also include another woman architect from China, Tiantian Xu who have significantly improved village economies and social cohesion.
The full list of the recipients is here.
In 2023, Yasmeen Lari was awarded the prestigious Royal Institute of British Architects Royal Gold Medal for her humanitarian work.
Contribution of Yasmeen Lari
Yasmeen Lari co-founded the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan with her husband, Suhail Zaheer Lari, in 1980, and has constructed over 50,000 sustainable self-built shelters and over 80,000 ecological cooking stoves using natural materials like mud, lime, and bamboo.
