Architecture was not Liu Jiakun’s first choice. Before it on his list of potential subjects to study came medical sciences (to please his parents), storage management and tannery. Even when he did finally commit to architecture in the 1970s, Liu did not immediately take to it. He signed up, he says, because he thought it was mostly about drawing, and was disappointed to find it was not, quitting the profession soon after to become a novelist. It was only gradually that he drifted back. “Life will find its own way,” he says.
Now the 69-year-old Chinese architect has been awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. His designs are thoughtful, considered and intriguing, and his way of working with salvaged and remade materials, as well as with builders and tradespeople, has marked him out from his contemporaries in China’s vast arena of generic commercial construction.
His best known project is West Village (2015) in his home city of Chengdu. A megablock that more closely resembles a kind of urban stadium than a housing development, its design aims to create an almost utopian interior, its deep terraces surrounding a forested, landscaped courtyard with playing fields and parks. A stack of shallow ramps allows residents and visitors to climb the structure slowly and use the top deck as a public space with a view of the city. It became so successful as an attraction that the authorities (always wary of a crowd) closed off public access.