In a country where cement has become shorthand for progress, a quiet movement is turning the conversation back to earth. Across Pakistan, architects, builders, and everyday homeowners are rediscovering indigenous materials not as relics of the past, but as tools for survival, resilience, and cultural continuity.
For decades, modern housing in Pakistan followed a predictable pattern. Brick walls, cement plaster, tiled floors, concrete roofs. The aesthetic, and often the aspiration, was imported. To build a house was to mimic a certain global sameness, a visual promise of upward mobility. The result was a growing sameness of cities and towns, increasingly detached from local climate and craft.
But the climate, both literal and cultural, has begun to shift.
In Sindh, the summer of 2022 brought floods that drowned entire districts. Cement structures cracked under the pressure or collapsed outright. In contrast, some of the oldest forms of shelter, made with mud and bamboo, stood firm or could be easily rebuilt with local labor and material. In the Thar Desert, where temperatures soar and rainfall is rare, homes made from adobe and thatch remain cooler than their cement counterparts without the need for electricity or fans. The logic is not nostalgic. It is environmental.
Architect Yasmeen Lari, one of Pakistan’s most acclaimed designers, has been at the forefront of this revival. After years in conventional practice, she turned to what she calls “barefoot architecture” — zero-carbon, locally sourced structures designed for the poorest communities. Her work in flood-affected areas involves lime, mud, bamboo, and stone. These are not emergency shelters alone. They are long-term, dignified homes that cost a fraction of conventional housing and can be built by the people who live in them.
Lari’s work is rooted in an older understanding of architecture as a public act. A building is not simply a container for life but a reflection of its rhythms. Indigenous materials have always responded to those rhythms. Mud keeps homes cool in the day and warm at night. Stone walls absorb heat and release it slowly. Bamboo, flexible and light, performs well during earthquakes and can be replenished sustainably.
There is also an economy to these choices that resists the pressures of modern development. A bag of cement is expensive. A pile of mud is not. The revival of indigenous materials is not only about sustainability but also about access. In rural and peri-urban areas, where formal housing markets remain out of reach for many, local materials offer a way to build with autonomy. The knowledge needed to construct with them often already exists in the community, passed down from ustads to apprentices, mothers to daughters.
Yet there are cultural barriers. In many parts of Pakistan, mud houses are still seen as symbols of poverty. To aspire is to paint your home grey and white, to clad it in tile, to smooth its imperfections. Architecture has become not just a physical structure but a performance of status. This makes the work of those who choose indigenous materials in urban contexts even more significant.
Firms like Coalesce Design Studio in Lahore and Studio Subtractive in Islamabad are experimenting with local materials in modern formats. Their work brings natural textures into contemporary spaces, not as decoration but as structure. In doing so, they challenge the idea that vernacular methods are incompatible with modern life. They show that local can be beautiful, functional, and forward-looking.
Philosophically, the return to indigenous materials suggests a different relationship with place. It resists speed. It invites repair. It recognizes the value of what is already here rather than what must be shipped in. In a world where permanence is often equated with poured concrete, there is something quietly radical in choosing to build with materials that erode, age, and return to the ground.
Perhaps this is not about turning back the clock, but rather about remembering how to listen. To the land, to the weather, to the ways our grandparents built not out of scarcity, but out of knowledge. In a time of climate collapse and social fragmentation, the revival of indigenous materials offers more than shelter. It offers a different way of thinking about what it means to build, and what it means to belong.
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