The 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize Goes to Liu Jiakun

Following Wang Shu in in 2012, Liu is the second architect from China to be lauded with the Pritzker Structure Prize, and he has devoted his apply to designing in and for his native nation. His main initiatives embrace the Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Artwork Museum (2002) in Chengdu, China, which intertwines a standard backyard and the brut concrete-walled gallery constructing; the Division of Sculpture on the Sichuan Superb Arts Institute (2004) in Chongqing, China, a contextually delicate rust-colored constructing whose higher ranges are angled outward to make sure most mild and air for educational occupants; and the block-wide business courtyard West Village (2015) in Chengdu, China, which incorporates a group sports activities area at its middle. The Suzhou Museum of Imperial Kiln Brick (2016) in Suzhou, China, is a flat-roofed trendy tackle the standard materials that it reveals; and the renovation of the cliffside Tianbao Cave District of Erlang City (2021) in Luzhou, China, calls upon conventional Chinese language pavilion structure to each reveal and conceal the brand new constructions accommodating guests to the world’s largest liquor storage caves.

“In a world that tends to create infinite boring peripheries, he has discovered a strategy to construct locations which can be a constructing, infrastructure, panorama, and public area on the identical time,” stated the Pritzker Structure Prize jury chair and 2016 laureate Alejandro Aravena of Liu’s oeuvre. “His work could provide impactful clues on the best way to confront the challenges of urbanization in an period of quickly rising cities.”

Along with utilizing structure to create group, shield aesthetic context and heritage, and combine panorama into rural and concrete environment, Liu’s initiatives create poetic interplay between mild, shadow, and supplies. For the latter, he prioritizes sourcing native items that assist conventional craft and seeks these with texture and visual imperfections so as to add character to his buildings. Shopfronts on the aforementioned West Village complicated, for instance, are embedded with what the architect calls “rebirth bricks,” a fortified materials he invented by mixing rubble from the ruins of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake with cement and native wheat fiber. Stronger and extra economical than typical brick, they’re additionally ingrained with cultural significance. In 2009, in Chengdu, China, simply 50 miles from the lethal 7.9-magnitude earthquake’s epicenter, Liu beforehand used the fabric to create his smallest work, an intimate Memorial to Hu Huishan. Designed to honor a teenage woman who died through the pure catastrophe, it takes the form of a refugee tent and is as a lot an ode to a person reminiscence as it’s to the collective.