On March 4th, the official website of the Pritzker Architecture Prize announced that the winner of the 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize is Liu Jiakun from Chengdu, China.
"Architecture should reveal something—it should summarize, condense, and showcase the inherent qualities of a place. It has the power to shape human behavior, create an atmosphere, provide a sense of tranquility and poetry, evoke compassion and kindness, and foster a sense of community where people share weal and woe," said Liu Jiakun.
Liu Jiakun
Liu Jiakun weaves together seemingly opposing elements such as utopia and daily life, history and modernity, collectivism and individual values, and designs buildings that support and showcase the lifestyles of ordinary citizens. He adheres to the transcendent power of the architectural environment. Through the coordination of various dimensions such as culture, history, emotion, and society, he uses architecture to unite communities, stimulate humanistic care, and elevate the human spirit.
The jury's citation for the 2025 award pointed out that Liu Jiakun's works, with their profound coherence and stable quality, break free from various aesthetic and stylistic constraints, and imagine and construct a new world. What he advocates is a strategy rather than a certain style. He never relies on repetitive methods but evaluates each project in different ways based on its specific characteristics and needs. In other words, Liu Jiakun is rooted in the present and deals with each project according to local conditions, even presenting us with a brand-new daily life scene. In addition to knowledge and technology, the most powerful tools he adds to the architect's toolkit are common sense and wisdom.
West Village Courtyard
Liu Jiakun graduated from Chongqing Institute of Architectural Engineering (which has now merged with Chongqing University) in 1982, and was then assigned to work at Chengdu Architectural Design and Research Institute. From 1984 to 1985, he worked in Tibet. From 1987 to 1989, he was seconded to the Literary Academy of Sichuan Province to engage in literary creation. From 1990 to 1992, he worked in Xinjiang. It was not until 1999 that he established Jiakun Architects, officially starting his career as an architect.
"Although my occupation has been an architect since 1982, I have really been engaged in architectural design only in the past more than two decades. At the beginning, I wasn't interested in architectural design. During the four years at school and even the more than ten years after graduation, I didn't focus my energy on architectural design. I had a greater interest in other things. I always wanted to paint. Like most young people of that era, I was also fond of literature and occasionally wrote novels," Liu Jiakun once said.
“Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Art Museum
The Jiakun Architects office is located in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Different from other young Chinese architects, Liu Jiakun has always refused to "gather" in cities like Beijing and Shanghai. For a long time, he has been firmly rooted in the land of Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Moreover, his "identity as a literati" also makes him a rather unique figure among the most popular front-line architects in China. For many years in his architectural design career, Liu Jiakun has always been happy to be a literati.
"I didn't choose to write poetry but instead chose the form of writing novels. This might have an internal similarity to architecture. Both of them require fabricating a reality and constructing a relatively complete world," Liu Jiakun once said.
