Liu Jiakun facts for kids

Liu Jiakun (born 1956) is a Chinese architect known for his focus on minimalism, humanism, and locally contextual design. In 2025, he won the Pritzker Prize.

Early life and education

Liu was born in 1956 in Chengdu, in the Sichuan Province of China. His mother was an internist doctor at Chengdu Second People's Hospital. As a 17-year old during the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to the countryside to serve as a laborer, as a part of the country's rusticated youth program. Initially aspiring to be an artist, he was drawn to architecture due to its connection with drawing and design. He graduated in 1982 from the Chongqing Institute of Architecture and Engineering (now part of Chongqing University) with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in architecture.

Career

After graduation, Liu worked at the state-owned Chengdu Architectural Design and Research institute. He later spent time in the Tibet and Xinjiang autonomous regions of China, exploring art and literature. He returned to architecture in 1993 after being inspired by an exhibition by former classmate Tang Hua.

In 1999, he founded Jiakun Architects in Chengdu. Since then, his firm has completed over 30 projects across China, including academic, cultural, civic, commercial, and urban planning works.

Architectural philosophy and select works

Liu's work emphasizes the integration of local context, traditional craftsmanship, and sustainable design, while avoiding flashy flourishes. His projects often make use of local materials and the aesthetic of imperfection. After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, he repurposed earthquake rubble into new building materials, demonstrating community resilience. He designed the "Memorial to Hu Huishan", which commemorates a 15-year-old girl killed when her school collapsed during the earthquake. The memorial was built to resemble a tent and contained some of Hu's possessions, including a scarf and a backpack.

In 2002, he designed the Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Art Museum in Chengdu, modeled on a traditional Chinese garden, to house a private collection of Buddhist relics. He worked on the Shuijingfang Museum in 2013, which was built on the site of a 600-year old distillery and focused on the history of Chinese Baijiu liquor. His design of the Museum of Clocks had a series of clocks depicting the end of the Cultural Revolution in China.

His commercial projects included the Shanghai campus of the pharmaceutical company Novartis, which he designed in 2014. The campus combined traditional Chinese aesthetic with a contemporary exterior, including multiple tiered balconies. His 2015 work "West Village" in Chengdu was a mixed-use public project that included offices, recreational, athletic, and cultural spaces; it was considered modest and visually understated, contrasting with the neighboring high rise buildings. The village block incorporated pedestrian walkways, green spaces, and bike paths. Liu's other works in Chengdu include a maternity ward at Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding and the Suzhou Museum of Imperial Kiln Brick.

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  West Village – Chengdu (2015)

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  Teahouse at the Jinhua Architecture Park (2002)

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  Hu Huishan Memorial Museum (2008)

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  Museum of Contemporary Art, Chengdu (2011)

Exhibitions and international recognition

Liu's designs have been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale and a solo exhibition at Berlin's AEDES Gallery. In 2018, he was commissioned to design the Serpentine Pavilion in Beijing, which draw international attention.

Awards

In 2025, Liu was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize; he was the third Chinese architect to receive the award, after Wang Shu in 2012 and I.M. Pei in 1983. The Pritzker jury praised Liu's "reverence for culture, history and nature, chronicling time and comforting users with familiarity through modern interpretations of classic Chinese architecture." The award citation read "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."