Chinese architect Liu Jiakun has been selected as the 2025 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Born in Chengdu in 1956, Liu Jiakun was a part of China’s Zhiqing (‘educated youth’) during the cultural revolution before attending the Institute of Architecture and Engineering in Chongqing in 1978. After working for the state-owned Chengdu Architectural Design and Research Institute and relocating to Tibet from 1984 to 1986, he founded his own architectural firm, Jiakun Architects, in 1999 in Chengdu. His practice seeks to uphold the transcendent power of architecture while understanding that it is a product of community, spirituality, tradition and the preexisting. He has built over thirty projects in China throughout his four-decade career, spanning academic buildings, cultural institutions, civic spaces, commercial buildings and urban planning. In 2018, he was selected to design the inaugural Serpentine Pavilion Beijing. Liu is also the author of several publications including The Conception of Brightmoon (2014), Narrative Discourse and Low-Tech Strategy (1997), Now and Here (2002) and I Built in West China? (2009).
The jury, chaired by Alejandro Aravena (Founder and Executive Director of ELEMENTAL; and 2016 Pritzker Laureate), said in a statement: ‘In a global context where architecture is struggling to find adequate responses to fast evolving social and environmental challenges, Liu Jiakun has provided convincing answers that also celebrate the everyday lives of people as well as their communal and spiritual identities.
‘Through an outstanding body of work of deep coherence and constant quality, Liu Jiakun imagines and constructs new worlds, free from any aesthetic or stylistic constraint. Instead of a style, he has developed a strategy that never relies on a recurring method but rather on evaluating the specific characteristics and requirements of each project differently. That is to say, Liu Jiakun takes present realities and handles them to the point of offering a whole new scenario of daily life. Beyond knowledge and technique, he adds common sense and wisdom to the designer’s toolbox.’
The Pritzker prize, now in its 54th edition, awards $100,000 and a bronze medallion to each laureate. Founded in 1979 by the Pritzker family of Chicago, the annual award is regarded as architecture’s highest honour. Liu will be honoured at a celebration at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates this spring, and globally with a virtual ceremony video this fall.
