Liu Jiakun’s path to architecture was neither linear nor predictable. Born in 1956 in Chengdu, People’s Republic of China, he spent much of his childhood in the corridors of the Second Chengdu People’s Hospital, founded as Gospel Hospital in 1892, where his mother was an internist.

At the age of seventeen, Liu was part of China’s Zhiqing, or “educated youth” programme assigned to vocational peasant agriculture in the countryside.

Liu graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering in Architecture in 1982 and was one of the first students of the generation charged with rebuilding China during its transformation era.

He established Jiakun Architects in 1999 in Chengdu, strongly advocating the transcendent power of architecture and understanding that it is a product of community, spirituality, tradition and the pre-existent.

He is currently a visiting professor at the School of Architecture, Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing, China), and has previously lectured at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine (Paris, France), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA), the Royal Academy of Arts (London, UK) and leading institutions in China.

Liu has participated in many international exhibitions. Among the awards he has received are the Far East Architectural Design Award (2007 and 2017); ASC Grand Architectural Creation Award (2009); Architectural Record China Awards (2010); WA Chinese Architecture Awards (2016); Building with Nature, Architecture China Award (2020); Sanlian Lifeweek City for Humanity Awards for Public Contribution (2020); and UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, New Design in Heritage Contexts (2021) and now the Pritzker Prize 2025 in recognition of his humanist architecture.