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Chilean designer Smiljan Radić Clarke has been awarded this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize, the world’s top industry honour.
The 60-year-old, who hails from Santiago, has well-earned reputation for radical originality and creating site-specific various forms with almost all of his signature works demonstrating his ability to blend materials with nature.
Perhaps his best known work in Europe is London’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a translucent fiberglass shell which rests on immense load-bearing, locally-sourced stones.
Light is filtered rather than displayed with the enclosure remaining partial, allowing visitors to experience shelter without complete separation from the surrounding park.
In its citation, the 2026 jury was fulsome in its praise of what it called his “optimistic and quietly joyful” structures.
“If architecture gives shape to the ways in which people live, Radić’s work produces spatial experiences that feel at once surprising and entirely natural,” added the Pritzker jury.
Architecture as art
Accepting the award, Radić said his practice aims to create “structures that stand under the sun for centuries, waiting for our visit.”
“We strive to create experiences that carry emotional presence, encouraging people to pause and reconsider a world that so often passes them by with indifference,” he added.
In his native Chile, one of Radić’s best known works is the regional theatre in Biobío (Teatro Regional del Biobío, Concepción, Chile, 2018), a carefully engineered semi-translucent envelope which modulates light and supports acoustic performance through restraint.
The announcement of this year’s recipient was due last week but was delayed by the appearance of Tom Pritzker, who heads the prize giving foundation, in the recently released files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Pritzker has now distanced himself from the foundation but will remain as a director and vice president.
Smiljan Radić Clarke is the 55th Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and has upcoming projects in Albania, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
First awarded in 1979 to modernist Philip Johnson, the Pritzker Architecture Prize has been given to some of the profession’s most influential figures including IM Pei, Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid.
Additional sources • Pritzker Architecture Prize, AFP