The hometown magic of 2025 Pritzker Prize winner Liu Jiakun

Across the city of Chengdu, China, the quiet but remarkable buildings of Liu Jiakun has slowly pierced through the dominant stereotype of bombastic Chinese architecture. Liu, who has just been named the 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate, has spent the past three decades carefully injecting pieces of socially conscious and transformative architecture into his hometown.

Liu’s work includes subtle museums, historically informed preservation projects, and progressive urban projects that blur the edges of private space and public good. “In a world that tends to create endless dull peripheries, he has found a way to build places that are a building, infrastructure, landscape and public space at the same time,” writes Alejandro Aravena, chair of the Pritzker jury.

Novartis (Shanghai) Block – C6 [Photo: courtesy of Arch-Exist]

Liu, 69, has a unique background that informs his work. After studying architecture in the late 1970s and early ’80s, he worked at the state-owned Chengdu Architectural Design and Research Institute before volunteering to embed in remote Tibet where he developed a passion for meditation and writing. For a decade he left architecture to write novels and paint. In 1999 he returned to the field and established Jiakun Architects, when he was in his 40s. He now has more than 30 built projects to his name, many located in and around his hometown of Chengdu.

In its citation for the 2025 Pritzker Prize, the jury commended Liu for his focus on the creating high-quality buildings for the lives of ordinary people. “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,” the jury writes. “Liu Jiakun rethinks the fundamentals of density through cohabitation, crafting an intelligent solution that balances the opposite forces at play.”

West Village [Photo: courtesy Chen Chen]

This is especially evident in one of Liu’s standout projects, the West Village mixed use “urban complex,” which wraps the perimeter of a gigantic city block with a five-story building combining shops, offices, and community spaces. One full side of this megablock is made of a striking crisscross of steel ramps that serve to connect pedestrians and cyclists to the complex’s various spaces while also doubling as an inner city trail. A large courtyard of sports fields and gardens sits inside the built perimeter, with its towering ramps serving as a window frame for the 21-million-person city beyond.

West Village [Photo: courtesy Qian Shen Photography]

This socially minded work is continuing at an even larger scale in a forthcoming project. Liu’s firm is in the midst of creating a large park from a former steel factory in the city of Hangzhou. Opening once degraded land to the public while also celebrating its industrial heritage, the park strikes a soft balance between history and contemporary urban demands.

Liu is just the second Pritzker Prize winner from China, after Wang Shu in 2012. No American has won the prize since 2005.

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