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0‘I aspire to be like water’: the exquisite buildings of Liu Jiakun, winner of architecture’s top prize
May 4, 2025, The Guardian
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He turns steelworks into parks and makes ‘rebirth bricks’ from earthquake rubble. As the novelist, meditator and ‘accidental architect’ wins the Pritzker prize, we look at the masterful temples, caves and public spaces of this one-man antidote to Chinese bombast
Pensioners take their evening stroll on an elevated walkway, surrounded by lush thickets of bamboo, as a game of five-a-side football kicks off on a sunken pitch below. Around them, forming a huge C-shaped courtyard, rises a five-storey stack of streets in the sky, where signs advertise everything from yoga and dance studios to skincare clinics, barbecue restaurants and computer programming classes for kids. A long, sloping ramp connects the different levels, knitting the structure together in a zigzag promenade that culminates on the roof, framing views out over the sprawling Chinese megacity of Chengdu.
This multi-levelled landscape of leisure, culture and commerce, known as West Village, is the work of architect Liu Jiakun, who has been named as the recipient of this year’s Pritzker prize, the world’s highest accolade in architecture. His is a name that few outside China will know, and yet within the country he is respected as one of the masters of his generation. Over the last four decades he has quietly built an exemplary body of work, mostly in the south-west province of Sichuan, ranging from museums and universities to public spaces and urban plans. Each of his projects channels the spirit of its place, forming carefully crafted backdrops to everyday life – free from the bombast and swagger of much contemporary architecture in China.
“I became an architect by accident,” says Liu, speaking through a translator in his studio in Chengdu. Like the man, his office is unassuming, housed in a nondescript tenement building where he also runs a small cafe and gallery. “My teacher told me that the subject would allow me to practise drawing, but I didn’t know more than that when I applied for university.”
