Pritzker Prize 2025: Liu Jiakun from China excellent as the Nobel Prize of the Architecture
Pritzker Prize 2025: Liu Jiakun from China excellent as the Nobel Prize of the Architecture
In the course of its 46-year history, the Pritzker-Prize , which is considered the most prestigious award in architecture, often won: apparently lonely genius, with their visions shape. It is a sign of the change in priorities in the industry that the Pritzker Prize, often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Architecture" this year, was awarded to a man who actively avoids a recognizable style.
Liu Jiakun: an architect without a recognizable style
Liu Jiakun, who was announced on Tuesday as award winner in 2025, spent most of his career, which lasts around four decades, with the design of reserved academic buildings, museums and public spaces in his hometown Chengdu (and in nearby Chongqing) in China's southwest. His hyperlocals and even "low-technologically" techniques went at the expense of distinctive aesthetics.
an innovative approach in the architecture
In China's time, Liu benefited quietly and quietly instead by having every location as well as the surrounding history, nature and craft traditions determine his designs. Whether reusing earthquake to reuse or when creating rooms in which local flora can thrive - for Liu the methodology counts more than the shape. In its reasoning, the Pritzker Prize jury Liu praised just because of this approach: "He pursues a strategy instead of a style."
"how water act"
In the run-up to the announcement, the 68-year-old architect (who was admittedly "a little surprised" about the award) said that he was trying to "act like water". "I try to penetrate and understand the place ... then when the time is ripe, the idea of the building will strengthen," he said in a video call from Chengdu and added: "A firm style is a double -edged sword. He can help others to remember quickly, but he also restricts you and takes a certain freedom."
a return to the roots
Liush's company, Jiakun Architects, has completed over 30 projects - all in China - in almost so many years. The architect was often inspired by the history of his country. Traditional pavilions influenced the flat roof overrides of his museum for imperial bricks in Suzhou; The surrounding balconies of the campus in Shanghai, designed by him for the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, are reminiscent of a stepped pagoda. But Liu emphasizes that these alludes to the past will never be made only for nostalgic reasons.
tradition for modern use reinterpret
"I concentrate on the topics that deals with tradition and not on the shapes that it presents," he explained. In other words, elements of traditional architecture have to be reinterpreted for functional, modern use and may not only be used as homage to past times. In China's cities there are numerous examples of the opposite in which curved roofs are added to otherwise characterless buildings in order to achieve an unclearly defined "being Chinese".
a new beginning for China
born in 1956, three years before China (and argubly in the world) in the most devastating famine, Liu Jiakun's childhood revolved around the hospital in Chengdu in which his mother worked. He showed a talent for art and literature early on, although, like many of his generation, his teenage years through the
However, Liush's career fell to Mao exactly during the period - a time when the architecture of state control and socialist ideals was freed. In 1978 he accepted a place at the Institute for Architecture and Engineering in Chongqing, two years after the death of the former Chinese communist leader, and completed his studies in the middle of the reform policy measures that opened China's centrally controlled economy for market economy forces
This time brought enormous changes for architecture. Important foreign texts and journals from the area of architecture came into the country and were widely used for students and academics. State -controlled draft institutions, such as the one in which Liu worked in his early career, were finally allowed to charge fees after only serving the state. But in the fast -moving atmosphere of the 1980s, Liu still felt that the architecture "lagged behind". "When I graduated, it seemed that architects had nothing to do," he said. "The economy had not developed and ideas were not active." in the early 1990s, when Liu also pursued the letter at that time, he thought about giving up the architecture. He changed his opinion after seeing an exhibition of a former classmate, the architect Tang Hua, who inspired him to escape the shadow of the state -controlled past of his sector. In 1999 he founded Jiakun Architects , one of the country's first private practices. The company's early projects laid a foundation for understanding Lius Ethos. his Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Art Museum, which was opened in Chengdu in 2002, is peaceful in a bamboo forest, its rough exposed concrete and gray slate facade harmonizes with the stone artifacts housed therein. The decrees and overhangs of his rust -colored building for the Department of Sculpture, which was completed two years later for the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing, are even sculptures. In the museum of the clocks in Chengdu, the structured brick facade is more reminiscent of the modest past of the region than a radiant future. When architecture in China became increasingly Bold and bombastic in the 2010s (a trend that finally led to the country's cabinet, the state council's cabinet to stop "oversized, xenotropic and bizarre" buildings), Liush's creating remained silent - even as the scope of his orders. Liu himself admits that his company was always too small to tackle the skyscrapers or mixed mega projects that redesigned China's skylines. But even when his work increasingly included corporate real estate and urban regeneration, his motivations were somewhere else. "I am not very interested in the endeavor to create higher and larger buildings," he said. "I don't necessarily contradict this. I just don't care very much." a sign of progress
inspiration from the past and a look into the future
everyday architectures retained
focus on publicity and environment
Instead, Liu tries to remedy some of the evils caused by the rapid urbanization of his country. "China's cities develop very quickly, but faces two major challenges," he said. "One is the relationship with public space and the other the relationship with nature. I think my works focus on these two aspects."
The symbiosis between nature and architecture shows itself in Liush's ambitious West Village, an inner -city block in Chengdu, which was converted into an inner courtyard, but on a neighborhood. Weird paths lead cyclists and pedestrians around a five -story building that circles football spaces and lush green - a vertically newly designed park. This large public gesture is accompanied by many small measures. Liu bricks used for the paving, which were provided with holes and filled with soil, which could sprout grass through the middle.
innovations for a better future
The Shuijingfang Museum with equally well thought -out building materials was built. These were created by Liush's company from rubble of the Wenchuan-Erdquake, which devastated the Sichuan region in 2008. The reconstructed bricks (made by mixing the rubble with wheat neck and cement) were used in several of his projects. This is an innovation that shows why Liu is celebrated for the practice of a kind of everyday architecture in which the local context plays a major role.
A look beyond the borders
But does this mean that the architect's vision will always be limited to China, the country that he best understands? Despite the design of the First overseas pavilions for the serpentine gallery in London in 2018 and Liu has never completed a project abroad of the lectures at institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. When asked whether he would appreciate the prospect of a prestigious international mandate that the Pritzker Prize's profit would certainly offer him, Liu said that his approach was certainly applicable to foreign contexts if there is enough research and preparation. "From the perspective of the method and methodology, there is actually no problem doing this abroad," he said, adding: "As long as I know the place completely, I think that (my) method set is fully applicable."
This article was written with contributions by CNNS Hassan Tayir.