Liu Jiakun has been introduced because the 2025 Laureate of the Pritzker Structure Prize – an award described by the Pritzker crew as “structure’s highest honour.”
In response to the Pritzker Structure Prize jury, Liu was a deserving recipient attributable to his endorsement of structure as a transcendent energy that forges neighborhood, conjures up compassion and elevates the human spirit.
“Via an impressive physique of labor of deep coherence and fixed high quality, Liu Jiakun imagines and constructs new worlds, free from any aesthetic or stylistic constraint,” the jury’s quotation famous.
“As an alternative of a mode, he has developed a method that by no means depends on a recurring methodology however reasonably on evaluating the precise traits and necessities of every undertaking in a different way. That’s to say, Liu Jiakun takes current realities and handles them to the purpose of providing generally a complete new state of affairs of each day life. Past information and strategies, widespread sense and knowledge are essentially the most highly effective instruments he provides to the designer’s toolbox.”
Hailing from Chengdu, China, Liu based his observe Jiakun Structure in 1999. Over a profession spanning 4 many years, the observe has produced greater than 30 initiatives starting from tutorial and cultural establishments to civic areas, industrial buildings and concrete planning initiatives throughout China.
Liu’s work is widely known for its skill to create public area in densely populated city environments. “By multiplying typologies inside one undertaking, he innovates the function of civic areas to assist the breadth of requisites for a various society,” the Pritzker Structure Prize media communique reads.
Vital initiatives of Liu’s embody West Village (Chengdu, China, 2015) – a five-storey constructing enclosed by a fringe of ramped pedestrian pathways on the location of a complete metropolis block, and the Sichuan Fantastic Arts Institute Division of Sculpture (Chongqing, China, 2004) – a undertaking that maximises area with protruding higher ranges on a slim web site.
Liu aspires to honour traditional Chinese language structure by way of up to date interpretation and pursue sincere, enduring materiality throughout every of his initiatives. He prefers conventional craft and native uncooked supplies that maintain the economies of the communities during which he practices.
For Liu, “Structure ought to reveal one thing – it ought to summary, distil and make seen the inherent qualities of native folks. It has the ability to form human behaviour and create atmospheres, providing a way of serenity and poetry, evoking compassion and mercy, and cultivating a way of shared neighborhood,” he defined.
Chair of the jury and 2016 Pritzker Prize Laureate Alejandro Aravena mirrored, “Cities are inclined to segregate capabilities, however Liu Jiakun takes the other strategy and sustains a fragile steadiness to combine all dimensions of the city life.”
“In a world that tends to create limitless uninteresting peripheries, he has discovered a option to construct locations which can be a constructing, infrastructure, panorama and public area on the similar time,” Aravena famous. “His work could supply impactful clues on the right way to confront the challenges of urbanization, in an period of quickly rising cities.”
Different important works of Liu’s embody: Museum of Clocks, Jianchuan, Museum Cluster (Chengdu, China, 2007); Design Division on new campus, Sichuan Fantastic Arts Institute (Chongqing, China 2006); Lodging Middle of China Worldwide Apply Exhibition of Structure (Nanjing, China, 2012); Chengdu Excessive-Tech Zone Tianfu Software program Park Communication Centre (Chengdu, China, 2010); and Songyang Tradition Neighborhood (Lishui, China, 2020).
