The keys to Liu Jiakun’s work, the Chinese architect winning the 2025 Pritzker Prize

“I always aspire to be like water, to penetrate a place without a fixed form and merge with the local environment. Over time, water solidifies, transforming into architecture and perhaps even in the highest form of human spiritual creation. However, it still retains all the qualities of that place, both good and bad.”

Liu Jiakun, ganador del Pritzker 2025 prizeoffers with these words the key to his work, diverse and respectful of Chinese, site and functionality traditions.

Perhaps, this premise has been the most valued by the jury. In its foundations, they affirm that their work “outstanding, of deep coherence and constant quality (…) builds new worlds, free of any aesthetic or stylistic restriction“, Evaluating” differently the specific characteristics and requirements of each project. “

It also considers that its creations are both a historical record, a piece of infrastructure, a landscape and a notable public space.

Born in Chengdu in 1956, he obtained at age 26 a degree in Engineering in Architecture in the Chongqing Universityand in his early practice he participated in the reconstruction of post -revolutionary China. He founded his own study only in 1999 and can be said that he is the first one hundred percent Chinese: he formed in his country and all his production has been within his country. Moreover, practically all its projects reverse the old oriental architecture.

Chinese millenary architecture features in Liu Jiakun

For example, there are features of the classic Chinese millenary pavilions in the Suzhou Imperial Building Brick Museum (2016); The staggered balconies of block C6 of the headquarters Novartis in Shanghai (2014) remember Torres that represent many dynasties; And the Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Museum (Chengdu, 2002) is inspired by the traditional Chinese garden, which balances water and stones to reflect the natural landscape.

The volumes of this building without windows are separated by holes where natural light is filtered to the interior spaces.

Part of the Jianchuan museum group, the Watches Museum Imitate the austere relationship between the temple in the traditional Chinese cities and its periphery of commerce and residence. The red bricks resonate with the masonry of that time, and the exposed concrete form three exhibition rooms of geometric figures (squares, circles and crosses) that are themes throughout the space.

The large scale promotes an immersive experience, since the curved walls are juxtaposed with the straight edges of the floor and the recessed rectangular niches that exhibit historical watches. Sun light and shadows pass through a circular vacuum on the roof of a last round patio with brick walls, evoking a sun watch.

In the intervention to otro museo, Shuijingfangplanted a perimeter of new concrete structures surrounding pre -existing buildings with wood structure that exhibit both modern vinification and old practices. In a large patio, new two -story volumes are located with two -water roofs that emit narrow rays of sun, imitating the ventilation and light of the original wineries that housed ovens, fermentation practices and relics of the Ming and Qing dynasties. With a range of materials ranging from original wood to recycled bricks after the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, the museum allows visitors an immersive chronological trip.

As described, most of his works are large: museums, parks, neighborhoods, housing sets, cultural districts, universities pavilions. In its urban interventions, the brand -new Pritzker reformulates density with intelligent solutions such as those of the West Village (Xicun), also in Chengdu (2015), a project with which he participated in the Venice Architecture Biennial in 2015. Memory explains that it is an atypical design, with a centrifugal disposition that surrounds an apple to maximize the interior area of ​​sports and green areas.

With more than 135 thousand m2 of surface distributed on five levels, instead of closing on itself, West Village opens to the city through ramps that help delimit its perimeter and integrate paths for pedestrians and cyclists, offering open and closed routes that connect residents with the surrounding urban fabric and facilitate community activities. The oriental touch is given by bamboo courtyards arranged within each other, such as in a mamushka.

Liu Jiakun’s most important works

Similarly, its set of seven buildings for the design department of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute (Chongqing) Dialogue with the manufacturing landscape. The west, south and northeast buildings have vaulted, inclined and butterfly roofs, respectively, while the low pending ceilings of the other four buildings generate outdoor spaces overlooking the city and the mountains. Large patios at soil level provide flexible spaces and large roads, which connect the entire complex. The linear exterior stairs unify the buildings with each other, while providing contrast to the volumes, cell slate compounds and clay and concrete bricks.

For the same academy, the Sculpture Department appeals to blasting at the upper levels by maximizing the usable space. The exterior in oxide tones is mimicked with the other buildings of the campus and surrounding factories. Meanwhile, hollow double -layer hollow walls facilitate ventilation.

But Jiakum can also be outstanding in small creations, such as Memorial para hu huishandisappeared at age 15 in an earthquake: its form bums the improvised tents for survivors, while the interiors are painted pink, a favorite color of the adolescent. “Understand that identity is a matter of both collective and personal memory,” judges say in their foundations.

Nobody would say it by touring his three dozens of works, but he has also written several novels and published essays on Chinese reality, technology and tension between utopia and daily life. “Writing and practicing architecture are different art forms, and I did not deliberately combine them. However, perhaps due to my double training, there is an inherent connection between them in my work, such as narrative quality and the search for poetry in my designs, ”Liu said in statements collected by the Hyatt Foundationthe organizer of the Pritzker, based in Chicago.

Jiakum believes that the human relationship with nature is reciprocal and that is why the buildings mimicate with their surroundings, which achieves through the use of local and wild flora that grows in the bricks that places face down to favor its development. Many of their buildings have openings on roofs to allow trees to grow, such as their district renewal project Cueva de Tianbao In the town of Erlang (Luchou), completed in 2021.

Embedded in the lush landscape of the cliffs, the complex emerges and dissolves in its surroundings. Eaves planes and extended reinvent the shape of the pavilions dating from many millennia, and the steel and bamboo entrance pergola establishes the scale. The reception hall is cantilever, which encourages an aerial view. A patio of water with a reflective pond invites contemplation, while cherry trees align on a terrace and a bridge invites the passage to the exterior.

With his vast and diverse work, “Liu Jiakun has responded to the social and environmental challenges posed by architecture in a world in constant evolution with innovative solutions that celebrate both daily life and community and spiritual identities.” synthesizes the reasons for the prize the jury of the Pritzker, chaired by Alejandro Aravena and integrated by Barry Bergdoll, Deborah Berke, Stephen Breyer, André Corrêa do Lago, Anne LacatonHashem song, Kazuyo Sejima and Manuela Lucá Dazio.

The official medal delivery ceremony will be in the Abu Dhabi Louvre Museumon May 5. «