“I always aspire to be like water—to permeate through a place without carrying a fixed form of my own and to seep into the local environment and the site itself. Over time, the water gradually solidifies, transforming into architecture and perhaps even into the highest form of human spiritual creation. Yet, it still retains all the qualities of that place, both good and bad.” – LIU JIAKUN, Pritzker Laureate 2025
West Village
“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.” – Pritzker Jury Citation.
Museum of Cultural Revolution Clocks
The Jury citation also adds, “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.
Liu Jiakun also seeks a level of technology that is neither high nor low, but rather the “appropriate” one based on local wisdom, as well as materials and craftsmanship available. Since his early projects, he has broken the current architectural language to introduce the qualities of simplicity, deriving from the resources at disposal. His sincerity in the use of materials lets them speak for what they are, as their integrity does not require mediation or maintenance. It also enables them to age without fear of deterioration, because the collective memory is held within them.
Liu Jiakun – Design Institute Years
To such available cultural and social resources, Liu Jiakun adds nature creating new landscapes within the landscape. From the ‘West Village’ to the ‘Renovation of Tianbao Cave District of Erlang Town in Luzhou’, to the ‘Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Art Museum in Chengdu’, the built and the natural environments co-exist in a reciprocal relation and in line with the most ancient Chinese philosophy and tradition.
For embracing rather than resisting the dystopia/utopia dualism and showing us how architecture can mediate between reality and idealism, for elevating local solutions into universal visions, and for developing a language that describes a socially and environmentally just world, Liu Jiakun is named the 2025 Pritzker Prize Laureate.
Suzhou Museum of Imperial Kiln Brick
The built environment is often being pulled in opposite directions. While density appears to be a more sustainable solution for people to live together, the scarcity of space usually implies a poor quality of life. Liu Jiakun rethinks the fundamentals of density through cohabitation, crafting an intelligent solution that balances the opposite forces at play. Through transformative projects like the West Village in Chengdu, he reshapes the paradigm of public spaces and of community life.
The Renovation of Tianbao Cave District of Erlang Town
He invents new independent, shared ways of living together in which density does not represent the opposite of an open system. He also enables adaptation, expansion and replicability. Liu Jiakun enhances and welcomes the life that inhabitants bring to his projects, creating an architecture activated by its publics.
In Liu Jiakun’s work, identity is as much about the individual as it is about the collective sense of belonging to a place. He revisits the Chinese tradition as a springboard for innovation devoid of nostalgia or ambiguity. For him, identity refers to a country’s history, the traces of its cities and the relics of its communities. At the same time, he integrates the local and global dimensions with unprecedented results.
Department of Sculpture, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute
In his subtle, memorable museums, ‘Suzhou Museum of Imperial Kiln Brick’ or the ‘Shuijingfang Museum in Chengdu’, he creates new architecture that is at once a historical record, a piece of infrastructure, a landscape, and a remarkable public space. In the ‘Hu Huishan Memorial in Chengdu’, he understands that identity is a matter of both collective and personal memory, brilliantly elevating the individual perspective to a foundational element of place-making in order to revive a communal dimension.”
Suzhou Museum of Imperial Kiln Brick
The long journey and quest of Liu Jiakun to achieve architecture’s greatest achievement to be honored with the Pritzker Laureate 2025 started in 1956 in Chengdu. Having been born in Chengdu, Little Liu spent most of his childhood days in the corridors of Chengdu Second People’s Hospital, while mother was learning as an intern. Most of his family members were Physicians.
Liu Jiakun at Disaster-stricken Site
As destined, Liu explored the world through drawing and literature to pursue his creativity. He was introduced to architecture by a teacher and needless to say ‘Liu Jiakun has made his teacher proud’ with his amazing works over many decades and the Pritzker Award as icing on the cake’. Liu Jiakun’s pathway to architecture was neither linear nor expected. In the year 1978, he joined the Institute of Architecture and Engineering in Chongqing (renamed Chongqing University) to pursue architecture. Liu Jiakun reminisces, “Like a dream, I suddenly realized my own life was important as an architect.”
Novartis – Shanghai Block
In the last 4 plus decades, Liu Jiakun has changed China’s skyline with some of the most remarkable projects, ranging from academic and cultural institutions to civic spaces, commercial buildings and urban planning throughout China. He had stated once, “Writing novels and practicing architecture are distinct forms of art, and I did not deliberately seek to combine the two. However, perhaps due to my dual background, there is an inherent connection between them in my work—such as the narrative quality and pursuit of poetry in my designs.”
West Village
Liu Jiakun’s prominent written works have included The Conception of Brightmoon (Times Literature and Art Publishing House, 2014), exploring the conflict between utopias and human life, Narrative Discourse and Low-Tech Strategy (China Architecture & Building Press, 1997), Now and Here (China Architecture & Building Press, 2002) and 2009 Today Editorial Department’s I Built in West China?
Suzhou Museum of Imperial Kiln Brick
In the year 1982, Liu Jiakun graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Architecture. He was amongst the first generation of alumni tasked with rebuilding China, during a transformative time for the nation. Working for the State-owned Chengdu Architectural Design and Research Institute in his early career, he volunteered to temporarily relocate to Nagqu, Tibet (1984–1986), the highest region on earth. He reminisces, “My major strength of the time seemed to be my fear of nothing, and, in addition, my painting and writing skills.” During those years and the several that followed, he was an architect by day, but an author by night, deeply engrossed in literary creation.”
Museum of Cultural Revolution Clocks
It is indeed interesting to note that Liu Jiakun had once thought to leave architecture. Fortunately, his classmate Tang Hua’s ‘Solo Architectural Exhibition in 1993’ at Shanghai Art Museum reignited his passion for architecture with a new mindset that he, too, could deviate from prescribed societal aesthetics. He considers this transformational realization—that the built environment could serve as a medium for personal expression—as the moment that his architectural career truly began. He would soon experience his most formative years of intellectual growth, debating the purpose and power of architecture with contemporaries, including artists Luo Zhongli and He Duoling, and poet Zhai Yongming.
Museum of Cultural Revolution Clocks
Currently, Liu Jiakun works as a Visiting Professor at the School of Architecture Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. He has had the honour to have lectured at Cité de l’architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Royal Academy of Arts, London and most of the leading institutions in China. Liu Jiakun have been honored with the Far Eastern Architectural Design, Outstanding Award in 2007 and 2017; ASC Grand Architectural Creation Award in 2009; Architectural Record China Awards in 2010; WA Awards for Chinese Architecture in 2016; Building with Nature, Architecture China Award in 2020; Sanlian Lifeweek City for Humanity Awards for Public Contribution in 2020; and UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, New Design in the Heritage Contexts in 2021.
Landscape View of West Village
In the year 1999, he established Jiakun Architects in Chengdu, firmly upholding the transcendent power of architecture, while understanding that it is a product of community, spirituality, tradition and the preexisting. Liu continues to practice and reside in Chengdu, China, prioritizing the everyday lives of fellow citizens through his works.
“Identity is as much about the individual as it is about the collective sense of belonging to a place. Liu Jiakun revisits the Chinese tradition without nostalgic approach or ambiguity, but as a springboard for innovation. He creates new architecture that is at once a historical record, a piece of infrastructure, a landscape and a remarkable public space,” stated the 2025 Jury Citation.
Design Department Sichuan
The Pritzker Architecture Prize is conferred in acknowledgment of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which have persistently produced significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
Image Courtesy: The Pritzker Architecture Prize