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. He credits the environment of the Christian medical institute with cultivating his religious tolerance. Although almost all members of his immediate family were doctors, Liu showed an interest in the creative arts, exploring the world through drawing and literature, and a teacher suggested that he choose a career in architecture.
At seventeen, Liu was part of China’s Zhiqing, or educated youth programme assigned to vocational peasant farming in the countryside. Life, at the time, seemed inconsequential to him, until he was accepted to attend the Chongqing Institute of Architecture and Engineering (renamed Chongqing University) in 1978. Admittedly, he did not fully understand what it meant to be an architect, but “like in a dream, I suddenly realised that my own life was important“.
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 a time of transformation for the nation. Early in his career, he worked for the state-owned Chengdu Architectural Research and Design Institute and volunteered to move temporarily to Nagqu, Tibet (1984-1986), the highest region on earth, because “my main quality at that time seemed to be my lack of fear of anything and, in addition, my painting and writing skills“. During those and the following years, he was an architect by day, and a writer by night, deeply absorbed in literary creation.
He almost gave up on his architecture career until he attended the 1993 solo architectural exhibition of Tang Hua, a former university classmate, at the Shanghai Art Museum, which rekindled his passion for the profession and fuelled a new mindset that he too could deviate from social aesthetics.
Liu believes that this transformative realisation – that the built environment could serve as a means of personal expression – was the moment when his architectural career truly began.
He would soon experience his most formative years of intellectual growth, debating the purpose and power of architecture with contemporaries such as the artists Luo Zhongli and He Duoling, and the poet Zhai Yongming.
“I always aspire to be like water: to permeate a place without carrying a fixed form of my own and to seep into the local environment and the site concerned. Over time, water gradually solidifies, becoming architecture, and perhaps even the highest form of human spiritual creation. However, it still retains all the qualities of that place, both good and bad“.
He established Jiakun Architects in 1999 in Chengdu, strongly advocating the transcendental power of architecture, understanding it to be a product of community, spirituality, tradition and the existing. “Identity is as much about the individual as it is about the collective sense of belonging to a place. Liu Jiakun revisits Chinese tradition without a nostalgic approach or ambiguity, but as a springboard for innovation. He creates a new architecture that is at once a historical record, a piece of infrastructure, a landscape and an extraordinary public space” comments the Jury that awarded him the Pritzker Prize 2025.
Liu has participated in international exhibitions such as Experimental Architecture by Young Chinese Architects – The 20th UIA World Congress of Architects (1999, Beijing, China); TU MU Young Architecture From China (2001, Berlin, Germany); Urban Creation, Shanghai Biennale (2002, Shanghai, China); the 1st, 3rd and 7th Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture (2005, 2009 and 2017, Shenzhen, China); the 11th, 3rd and 15th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2008 and 2016, Venice, Italy); the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2015, Venice, Italy); the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2015, Venice, Italy); the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2015, Venice, Italy).and 15th Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition (2008 and 2016, Venice, Italy); 56th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition (2015, Venice, Italy); Now and Here – Chengdu | Liu Jiakun: Selected Works (2017, Berlin, Germany); and Super Fusion – Chengdu Biennale (2021, Chengdu, China).
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. His awards include the Far East Architectural Design Award (2007 and 2017); ASC Grand Architectural Creation Award (2009); Architectural Record China Awards (2010); WA China 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).
Liu continues to practice and reside in Chengdu, China, giving priority to the daily lives of his fellow citizens through his works.
Selected projects by Liu Jiakun
Sources: Jiakun Architects y The Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Photos of their authors, indicated in captions.
Videos courtesy of The Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Project by Liu Jiakun
