Liu, known for his understated designs that blend into their surroundings, was awarded the profession's highest honor.
At the age of 17, Liu Jiakun was sent to work in the countryside as part of China's “re-education” program during the Cultural Revolution.
“I didn’t see a clear future for myself — a lot of things were completely meaningless,” Liu said through a translator (his son Martin) in a recent phone interview from his office in Chengdu, China. “At the time, I thought life had no meaning.”
Eventually, Liu, now 68, found meaning in architecture, an endeavor that earned him the profession's highest honor: the Pritzker Prize.
Having founded his own practice, Jiakun Architects, in his native Chengdu in 1999, Liu has built more than 30 projects in China, including academic buildings, cultural institutions and public spaces. He also designed the first Serpentine Pavilion in Beijing in 2018 and was featured at the Venice Biennale.
His work is not flashy or over-the-top. Instead, the architect said, he aims to honor existing conditions, use local materials that are “ordinary, modern, cheap and local,” and elevate the human spirit.
“Through an extraordinary volume of work, profound coherence and consistent quality, Liu Jiakun imagines and constructs new worlds free from any aesthetic or stylistic constraints,” the jury said in its citation announcing the award on Tuesday. “Instead of a style, he has developed a strategy that never relies on a repetitive method, but rather on assessing the specific characteristics and requirements of each project differently. That is, Liu Jiakun takes existing realities and processes them to such an extent as to propose an entirely new scenario for everyday life.”
