There’s much to be said about what an architecture award functionally does: The AIA Gold Medal recognizes cumulative impact; magazine awards provide opportunities for emerging practices by showcasing design talent or lesser-known projects. But the Pritzker Prize is a little different, better understood as a “Nobel Prize” for architecture that honors an expression of design values over one’s career. Recent awardees, for example, include Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal (2021), recognized for their devotion to adaptive reuse, and Frances Kéré (2022), whose focus on design and social justice has brought his practice significant acclaim.

This year, the 2025 Pritzker Prize has been awarded to Chinese architect Liu Jiakun, 69, founder of Jiakun Architects. He’s known for his process—understanding specific nuances of a particular site, including its social and material histories—and portfolio, which are defined by an ethos, not any particular style.

For many Americans, Jiakun’s work has flown under the radar. The Guardian’s Olly Wainwright notes that he is only the second Chinese architect to have won the prize in its 46-year history, working exclusively in China on cultural and academic institutions, as well as civic spaces, many of which inject dense, urban conditions with natural features. But what makes his work so unique is how each project cracks open the site’s unique heritage and challenges, producing buildings that, according to the award announcement, “philosophically [look] beyond the surface to reveal that history, materials and nature are symbiotic.”

Perhaps this idea is most evident in his “Rebirth Brick Project” that began after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake that destroyed nearly four-fifths of all buildings in the affected area. The research premise was simple: to reuse rubble as an aggregate mixed with cement and straw fibers in rebuilding after the disaster; since then, these bricks have been used throughout his work including the Shuijingfang Museum, which celebrates the world’s oldest wine shop. Located in Chengdu’s cultural district, the museum houses a modern distillery and ancient cellar, utilizing Rebirth Bricks and bamboo scrimber to maintain a residential scale and local palette.

Shuijingfang Museum is made of a range of materials from original timber to eco-friendly “Rebirth Bricks” from the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. " layout="wide" credit="Photo courtesy of Arch-Exist" photoUserId=""/>

The bricks are also used in his largest project, the West Village district in Chengdu. The architecture and urban planning project spans an entire city block and features businesses organized around public outdoor spaces connected by a series of stairs and sloping ramps. Like a zigzagging vertical park, the project speaks to what the Pritzker jury citation calls “creating new landscapes within the landscape.”

The word “wisdom” appears throughout the award citation, which is fascinating when you consider that the profession typically champions technical prowess and stylistic individuality. “Wisdom” speaks to an innate knowing, something that was perhaps fostered by Jiakun’s background. He calls himself an “accidental architect,” per the Guardian; though he received an architecture degree in 1982, not long after the Cultural Revolution, he spent years writing novels and practicing painting while working for the state-owned Chengdu Architectural Design and Research Institute.

As he told the New York Times, it wasn’t until he attended an exhibition of work by Tang Hua, a former classmate, that he realized he might “also have personal expression through architecture [which allows him]...to get into people’s lives and have a deeper understanding of it.” In that sense, such wisdom is expressed through a sympathetic understanding about the lives lived within and around his buildings.

Such sentiments can be seen in even his smallest projects: a tiny memorial to a 15-year-old earthquake victim—realized as a permanent concrete relief tent filled with her personal belongings—speaks not just to the loss of one child, but to the loss of collective memory after disasters. A series of small, elevated tea houses in the Jinhua Art and Architecture Park connect visitors to the lush natural landscape: frosted corrugated walls open outward to provide views or to close for intimacy. Yet he also chose to use existing utility poles as columns for each tea house, allowing these structures to expand or be replicated anywhere, creating an economy of materials and use.

It speaks to what Alejandro Aravena, chair of the jury and 2016 Pritzker Prize Laureate, characterizes as “a way to build places that are a building, infrastructure, landscape and public space at the same time.” These projects are not particularly flashy, nor do they speak loudly to authorship. Instead, they celebrate sensible materials—some thoughtfully industrial, many handmade or produced locally—without neglecting traditional methods, history or physical context.

Top photo of the West Village in Chengdu courtesy of Qian Shen Photography.