Smiljan Radic Clarke, a 60-year-old architect from Santiago, has won this year's Pritzker Prize. The jury praised his "optimistic and quietly joyful" buildings, which often embrace a deliberately unfinished or fragile aesthetic while creating surprising, natural spatial experiences. Notable projects include the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London and the Vik Millahue Winery in Chile. The Pritzker honors a living architect for significant achievement in the field.
Smiljan Radic Clarke Wins Pritzker Prize for "Optimistic, Quietly Joyful" Architecture
Chilean architect Smiljan Radic Clarke (C) is the winner of the Pritzker Prize (LEON NEAL)(LEON NEAL/AFP/AFP)
Chile's architect Smiljan Radic Clarke has been named this year's Pritzker Prize laureate, organizers announced Thursday. The 60-year-old Santiago native was honored for a body of work that the jury described as "optimistic and quietly joyful," often taking forms that feel intentionally incomplete yet deeply humane.
Radic is widely known for inventive projects that fuse material experimentation with landscape: his Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London — a translucent, donut-shaped fiberglass shell perched on locally sourced stones — captured international attention, while the Vik Millahue Winery in Chile sits subtly among the Andes and surrounding vineyards. In his native country the Teatro Regional del Biobio in Concepción has been likened to a paper lantern for its sculptural presence.
Jury Citation
"If architecture gives shape to the ways in which people live, Radic's work produces spatial experiences that feel at once surprising and entirely natural. His buildings may appear temporary, unstable, or deliberately unfinished—almost on the point of disappearance—yet they provide a structured, optimistic and quietly joyful shelter, embracing vulnerability as an intrinsic condition of lived experience."
The panel also praised Radic for reminding audiences that architecture is an art, noting his diverse projects across Europe and in Chile. The Pritzker Prize, first awarded in 1979 to Philip Johnson, recognizes a living architect for "significant achievement"; past laureates include I.M. Pei, Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid. Last year's award went to Liu Jiakun of Chengdu.
Why it matters: Radic's work challenges conventional ideas of permanence and monumentality in architecture, proposing instead intimate, tactile spaces that respond to context, materials and human vulnerability.
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