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Yasmeen Lari Rejects Israel’s Wolf Prize
By ANNETTE MEIER
Portrait of YASMEEN LARI. Courtesy gestalten, Berlin.
On March 11, renowned Pakistani architect and humanitarian Yasmeen Lari turned down this year’s Wolf Prize for architecture, which is granted by the Israeli nonprofit Wolf Foundation. In an open letter to the organization, Lari cited the ongoing atrocities in Gaza as her reason for declining the USD 100,000 award.
Launched in 1978, the annual Wolf Prize honors scientists and artists across various disciplines whose outstanding achievements “have contributed to a better world.”
Lari, Pakistan’s first female architect, was also the 2023 winner of the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Royal Gold Medal. Her modernist designs are centered around sustainability and accessibility, ranging from monumental commercial buildings to social housing.
A day after the Wolf Foundation revealed its prize winners, Lari announced her rejection in a letter posted on social media. She thanked the jury for selecting her, but stated that “in view of the unfortunate continuing genocide in Gaza, I am not able to accept the award . . . even from an organization that is independent of the government.”
Following Lari’s decision to forgo the 2025 Wolf Prize—to which the Wolf Foundation has not publicly responded—Chinese architect Xu Tiantian is the only person in the architecture category to receive the award.
Annette Meier is an editorial assistant at ArtAsiaPacific.
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