Liu Jiakun has been named 2025 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize following a 40-year career and 30 projects ranging from academic and cultural institutions to civic spaces, commercial buildings and urban planning.
Liu, who founded Jiakun Architecture in 1999, designed the 2018 Serpentine Pavilion in Beijing, the 2007 Museum of Clocks, located in the Jianchuan Museum Cluster, the Design Department at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, the 2020 Songyang Culture Neighbourhood and the 2012 Lodging Centre at the China International Architecture Exhibition in Nanjing.
The jury’s citation said: “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.”
Liu graduated with a bachelor of engineering degree in architecture in 1982 and while working for the state-owned Chengdu Architectural Design and Research Institute was relocated to the highest region on earth in Nagqu, Tibet, between 1984 and 1986.
He almost gave up the profession before attending an architectural exhibition at Shanghai’s Art Museum in 1993, where he solidified his notion that the built environment could serve as a medium for personal expression.
Many of his works are modern interpretations of classic Chinese architecture, such as the use of the flat eaves at the Suzhou Museum of Imperial Kiln Brick and the window walls of Lancui Pavilion of Egret Gulf Wetland.
He is currently a visiting professor at Beijing’s School of Architecture Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Liu said: “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.”
Liu is also a novelist and commented on the connection between writing and designing: “They are distinct forms of art, and I didn’t 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.”
Liu is the 54th Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize; last year, it was won by Japanese architect Riken Yamamoto.
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