The Pritzker Architecture Prize has announced Chilean architect Smiljan Radić Clarke as its 2026 laureate. He will receive $100,000 and a bronze medallion.
Born and based in Santiago, Radić Clarke graduated with a degree in architecture from the Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile in 1989 before pursuing studies in history at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. He founded his eponymous firm, Smiljan Radić Clarke, in 1995 in Santiago. In 2017, he established the Fundación de Arquitectura Frágil, also in Santiago, to support experiment architecture that challenges disciplinary boundaries. Radić’s practice, spanning cultural institutions, civic spaces, commercial buildings, private residences and installations, is characterised by its sensitivity to material and site-specificity.
His work includes Guatero, for the XXII Chilean Architecture Biennial, Santiago, 2023; London Sky Bubble, London, 2021; the 2014 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London; House for the Poem of the Right Angle, Vilches, 2013; The Boy Hidden in a Fish, designed with his wife, the sculptor Marcela Correa, for the 12th International Architecture Biennale of Venice, 2010; Restaurant Mestizo, Santiago, 2006; Pite House, Papudo, 2005.
The announcement of this year’s winner was slightly delayed by the recent revelation of Thomas Pritzker’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The Prize has stressed the jury’s independence.
The jury, chaired by Alejandro Aravena (architect, educator and 2016 Pritzker Laureate), said in a statement:‘through a body of work positioned at the crossroads of uncertainty, material experimentation, and cultural memory, Smiljan Radić favours fragility over any unwarranted claim to certainty. His buildings appear temporary, unstable, or deliberately unfinished – almost on the point of disappearance – yet they provide a structured, optimistic and quietly joyful shelter, embracing vulnerability as an intrinsic condition of lived experience.’
The Work of Smiljan Radić Clarke
