Chilean architect Smiljan Radić, whose often-experimental designs include a doughnut-shaped pavilion in London and a restaurant held up by boulders in Santiago, was named the winner of this year’s Pritzker Prize — an award often dubbed the field’s equivalent to a Nobel Prize — on Thursday.
While the 60-year-old’s designs may, at first glance, appear precariously engineered or even unfinished, the award’s jury said they uplifted those who enter, calling his work “optimistic and quietly joyful.”
Radić becomes the fifth Latin American architect to win the prestigious prize in its 47-year history. First presented to modernist pioneer Philip Johnson in 1979, the annual award has since honored many of the profession’s most influential figures, including the late Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaas. But recent years have seen juries acknowledge lesser-known architects and figures committed to smaller-scale, or socially-minded, designs.
Founded in 1995, Radić’s eponymous firm has completed over 60 projects spanning housing, arts venues, an award-winning winery and even a bus stop shelter in Austria. But while he has worked across the Americas and Europe, most of the architect’s buildings were completed in his native Chile.
