Chilean architect Smiljan Radić is one of the most radical and original figures on the international scene, and he has just won the Pritzker Prize, the Nobel Prize of architecture. Born in Santiago, Chile in 1965, he is known for works such as the Casa del Poema del Angle Recte, a wood and concrete refuge in the heart of a Chilean forest, and the ephemeral pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery in London, a translucent fiberglass shell that appears to float above the lawns of the Gardens. "Through a body of work situated at the crossroads of uncertainty, material experimentation, and cultural memory, Smiljan Radić prefers fragility to any unjustified claim to certainty," reads the Pritzker Prize jury's statement. "His buildings seem temporary," the citation also states, "unstable or deliberately unfinished, almost on the verge of disappearing, and yet they offer a structured, optimistic, and discreetly cheerful refuge that embraces vulnerability as an intrinsic condition of lived experience." The award comes with a prize of 100,000 euros, and the winner was announced a week late following the appearance in Jeffrey Epstein's files of Tom Pritzler, director of the Hyatt Foundation, which awards the prize.

When a devastating earthquake struck the Chinese region of Sichuan in May 2008, architect Liu Jiakun (Chengdu, 1956) went there to support and assist the victims. He met a family who had lost a 15-year-old daughter. After hearing their story, he offered to design a public memorial called the Memorial for Hu Huishan using bricks taken from the ruins. He turned a tragic place into a place of contemplation. For this vindication of the common and traditional techniques, and also for the emotional and memorial charge of his building, Liu Jiakun was awarded the Pritzker Prize on Tuesday, the 1997 Pritzker Prize for the Study of the Living World. Nobel of architecture. “Valuing ordinary lives will be the foundation of our nation’s renaissance,” Liu Jiakun said in one of his most famous quotes.