Set against the sunbaked landscape of Pono Village in Sindh, Pakistan, a sweeping bamboo pavilion now houses workshops, gatherings, and moments of shared learning. Designed by Architect Jack Rankin in collaboration with Nyami Studio, The Juliet Centre was created in partnership with the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, continuing the foundation’s mission to build low-carbon, resilient structures rooted in tradition and community.
The centre stands at the heart of a pilot village originally envisioned by Yasmeen Lari, the RIBA Gold Medal-winning architect known for championing flood-resilient housing and zero-carbon construction. Following the devastating 2022 floods, Nyami Studio began working with Lari and her team to support long-term recovery efforts. This project, completed in 2023, extends that mission with a structure that merges digital design precision with time-honoured local craftsmanship.
Built over just three weeks, the structure reinterprets Lari’s earlier bamboo, mud, and lime typologies with a more sinuous, vaulted form. The bamboo roof curves upward into a soaring canopy, engineered through pre-calculated angles and a handmade formwork that allowed builders to bend and notch the bamboo without steaming tools. The result is a column-free span that keeps the interior open, flexible, and cool, a community-first space shaped by extreme temperatures, local materials, and collective effort.
“Achieving the required curvature was trial and error,” said Rankin. “With no shared language and 50-degree heat, construction was as much about mutual trust and patience as technique. The local craftsmen’s ingenuity made it possible.”
The roof is finished with locally harvested thatch, and below, the plinth is paved with 10,000 handmade mud tiles, fired in a nearby village. A retractable fabric façade offers protection from the elements, while the entire structure remains modular and open to future extension.
The Juliet Centre is named in memory of Rankin’s late mother and conceived as a space for education, dignity, and exchange, a gesture of gratitude to a community that, in Rankin’s words, “welcomed us as their own, sharing everything they had, even when they had so little.”
In the spirit of Yasmeen Lari’s advocacy, the pavilion represents an architecture of generosity, where sustainability is inseparable from collaboration, and beauty grows from the ground beneath your feet.
