The Chinese architect Liu Jiakun (Chengdu, China), has been awarded The Pritzker of Architecture 2025, for its “outstanding work, of deep coherence and constant quality” With which “imagines and builds new worlds, free of any aesthetic or stylistic restriction,” according to the jury’s decision of the world’s world in this discipline.
Liu, 54 awarded the Pritzker Architecture Award, is the founder of Jiakun Architecture, founded in 1999. He was born in Chengdu (China), but resides and works in his hometown. He will be honored in a celebration in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) this spring and worldwide with a virtual video ceremony this fall.
Liu’s career covers more than four decadeswith more than thirty projects that cover from academic and cultural institutions to civic spaces, commercial buildings and urban planning throughout China. Among his most significant works are also included in the Museum of Watches, Jianchuan Museum Cluster (Chengdu, China, 2007); the design department on the new campus of the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts (Chongqing, China, 2006); the accommodation center of the International Exhibition of Architecture Practices of China (Nanjing, China, 2012); the Communications Center of the Tianfu Software Park in the Chengdu High Technology Zone (Chengdu, China, 2010); and the Cultural neighborhood of Songyang (Lisui, China, 2020)
“Instead of a style, it has developed a strategy that is never based on a recurring method, but on different evaluating the specific characteristics and requirements of each project. That is, Liu Jiakun takes present realities and handles them to the point of sometimes offering a completely new scenario of everyday life. Beyond knowledge and techniques, common sense and wisdom are the most powerful tools adding to the designer’s toolbox, “they add.
Thus, they point out that intertwining apparent antipodes such as utopia versus everyday existence, history versus modernity and collectivism versus individuality, Liu offers an affirmative architecture that celebrates the life of common citizens. Along the same lines, they point out that defends the transcendent power of the environment constructed through the harmonization of cultural, historical, emotional and social dimensions, using architecture to forge the community, inspire compassion and raise the human spirit.
“Liu Jiakun raises the standard of living through the process and the purpose of architecture, promoting emotional connections that unite communities -Tom Pritzker, president of the Hyatt Foundation, who sponsors the prize. There is a wisdom in its architecture, which looks philosophically beyond the surface to reveal that history, materials and nature are symbiotic. ”
Thus, according to the ruling, in all his works, Liu demonstrates a reverence for culture, history and nature, making a chronicle of time and comforting users with familiarity through modern interpretations of classical Chinese architecture. In addition, the local and wild flora is present in all its works, since the bricks are placed face down to allow the grass to bloom through the central holes, native bamboo groves are planted in new sites in new sites and the floors and ceilings are designed with openings to allow the continuity of the existing trees.
“Cities tend to segregate functions, but Liu Jiakun adopts the opposite approach and It maintains a delicate balance to integrate all the dimensions of urban life -Alejandro Aravena, president of the jury and winner of the 2016 Pritzker Prize- In a world that tends to create endless boring peripheries, he has found a way to build places that are buildings, infrastructure, landscapes and public spaces at the same time. His work can offer shocking clues about how to face the challenges of urbanization, in an era of rapid growth cities “.
In the same way, the ruling indicates that the new winner creates public areas in populated cities where the luxury of space is largely absent, forging a positive relationship between density and open space. By multiplying typologies within a project, it innovates the role of civic spaces to support the amplitude of the requirements of a diverse society.
“Architecture must reveal something: it must abstract, distill and make visible the inherent qualities of local people. It has the power to mold human behavior and create atmospheres, offering a feeling of serenity and poetry, evoking compassion and mercy and cultivating a sense of shared community, “says Liu.