Strategy instead of style: why Liu Jiakun won the Pritzker Prize

“for creating new worlds free from aesthetic or stylistic constraints” This year’s Pritzker Prize was awarded to Liu Jiakun of China. About the master of life-affirming architecture - Aliya Sharifullina. In the extensive list of Pritzker Prize winners, Liu Jiakun is only the second architect from China. The first was Wang Shu, and curiously, at his awards ceremony in 2012, he called Jiakun the only colleague who understood him. They really have a lot in common: interest in man-made, but inexpensive materials and techniques, a free attitude to tradition and at the same time relying on it, the absence of catchy, deliberately ambitious projects among the works. “Many architects use a distinctly individual style and form to establish themselves in the world. But I'm not that architect. I don’t want to have an obvious style that you can recognize at first sight, said Pritzker Prize-winning architect Liu Jiakun. Liu Jiakun did not intend to become an architect. He dreamed of being an artist or a writer. Believing that architecture is closely related to drawing, he entered the Chongqing Institute of Architecture and Engineering. In the 80s, he went on a trip, engaged in writing and even planned to finally abandon architecture, until he was at an exhibition of projects of a classmate. It was only then that Jiakun realized that architecture could also be a means of self-expression for the author and returned to the profession. “There is an inextricable link between architecture and literature. Both involve surveillance of society. Both require patience to get a decent result, Liu said. In '99, Liu opened his own office in his hometown of Chengdu. Over four decades, they have designed more than thirty facilities, from academic and cultural institutions to public spaces across China. The architect has no foreign projects, but there are significant ones. Like West Village. “In an era of rapid urbanization, I wanted to rethink the role of housing and public spaces. I turned the whole city block into a “big courtyard”, an active environment that will facilitate communication and interaction of people, Liu said. Liu often reuses materials. This took on particular drama in 2008 after the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan. Then there were his “revival bricks”, made from the remaining from the destroyed buildings of construction debris: in their qualities, such blocks are stronger and cheaper than the original materials. The architect used these bricks in other buildings. Simplicity, accessibility, long-term, he puts above the architectural spectacle. “I always strive to be like water, to penetrate space without its own form, to absorb the social, cultural, historical context. Over time, the water solidifies, turning into architecture, but it retains all the qualities and elements of this place, both good and bad, explained Liu Jiakun. “It celebrates people’s everyday lives as well as their identity,” the Pritzker Prize jury said. According to Liu Jiakun, he seeks through architecture to reveal the hidden essence of the place and its inhabitants, and then offer them a new scenario of life, to create a particular atmosphere, often poetic. Liu is also a writer.

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