Liu Jiakun, a Chengdu-based architect recognized for his delicate, place-driven method to design, has been awarded the 2025 Pritzker Structure Prize, probably the most prestigious honor in structure. Liu, who has spent many years crafting a physique of labor rooted within the traditions and supplies of his native Sichuan province, is simply the second Chinese language citizen to obtain the prize, following Wang Shu in 2012.
The Pritzker jury praised Liu for utilizing “Chinese language custom with out nostalgia, however as a springboard for innovation,” crafting areas that operate as historic data, infrastructure, landscapes, and public boards. His tasks, which vary from museums and universities to whole city districts, reject the monumentalism of up to date Chinese language structure in favor of constructions that quietly combine into the rhythms of on a regular basis life.
One in every of his most notable works, West Village in Chengdu, exemplifies this fashion. The five-story mixed-use advanced capabilities as a vertical metropolis block, with walkways and ramps connecting open-air plazas, retailers, eating places, and sports activities services in a dynamic, multi-level public area. The construction was briefly “a sufferer of its personal success” The Guardian stated—after 9,000 individuals flocked to the rooftop promenade on a single day, authorities shut down entry. It has since reopened.
Liu’s work can be deeply tied to social and environmental considerations. After the devastating 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, he pioneered using “rebirth bricks,” repurposing rubble combined with wheat fiber to rebuild devastated areas. His current tasks, together with the revitalization of historic websites and a 45-hectare transformation of a former steelworks in Hangzhou, proceed his philosophy of mixing previous and current.
“I aspire to be like water,” Liu says. “To seep into a spot with out carrying a set type of my very own.”
