Every monsoon season, flooding and heat islands bring Karachi to a standstill. In this street of historic buildings, former living accommodation above shops had been transformed to offices and storage as families fled the high pollution, and a tangle of cables hid once-elegant façades. Yasmeen Lari’s intervention has transformed it into a flood-resistant, heritage-led eco-urban enclave whose success has already spawned similar projects elsewhere in the city. Low-carbon materials are used instead of concrete: brick walls and bamboo covers for underground channels dug to conceal cabling, and porous handcrafted terracotta cobbles. Rainwater is absorbed into the cobbled paving or channelled into aquifer wells to irrigate the four dense 'forests' planted along the middle of the street, which cool and clean the air and increase biodiversity. The cobbles are arranged in concentric circular patterns with feature tiles bearing images of Karachi heritage buildings, boosting local pride in them. The terracotta production for this paving has shown how craft revival can mitigate rural-urban migration, by providing enduring rural employment for a large number of people who were previously begging - mostly women.

Source: Aga Khan Trust for Culture