Sausages, cats and the human experience: prize-winning architect's world

Works by Chinese architect Liu Jiakun, this year's winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, have been described as "humanistic" and "minimalist," but peeling back all the technical terms, it might be better to describe his creations as simply spaces designed for ordinary people.

The 69-year-old native of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, is only the second Chinese architect to win the prestigious prize often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Architecture," following Wang Shu in 2012.

Liu's works are concentrated in China and free from any aesthetic or stylistic constraints. Instead of a style, he has developed a vision based on the individual characteristics of each project.

"Architecture should reveal something," he said in his acceptance speech. "It should abstract, distill and make visible the inherent qualities of local people. It has the power to shape human behavior and create atmosphere, offering a sense of serenity and poetry, evoking compassion and mercy, and cultivating a sense of shared community."

Liu's office is in an old residential building in Chengdu among busy, lively streets and lanes. From there, Liu and his colleagues can watch traffic, mingle among people discussing their lives in Sichuan dialect and smell the aroma of spicy hotpots.

It's a studio where life's rhythms abound. Sausages hang to dry, three adopted stray cats roam about as if they own the place, and staff cooking competitions are held.

This sense of a down-to-earth human environment leads to works of functional spaces that blend perfectly with their surrounding environments, absent a lofty "landmark" style.

"Architecture should first serve people through functional efficacy, which is the primordial purpose of any structure," he said in an interview last week. "Architecture should carry generational responsibilities reflecting long-term occupants of land and resources. It must sustainably benefit communities across decades or even centuries."

Liu's West Village, also known as Xicun Courtyard, in Chengdu is his largest work and exemplifies his philosophy. The five-story lifestyle center is organized around a central courtyard, akin to a public park, with buildings arranged along its perimeter and a series of nested courtyards open to the public.

"On first looking at it, I thought it was an unfinished building," said Zhang Yang, a Chengdu native who frequents West Village. "But walking into it, you may find it very vibrating. It has so many stores, cafes and bookshops that a person could spend a whole day there, and it has vast bamboo foliage. What's more comfortable than walking into a tranquil bamboo forest in the middle of a city? Not to mention that it even has a soccer field and outdoor movie theater. It's amazingly functional."

When his works evoke feelings of tranquility and comfort in people, Liu said he feels success.

"Architects are common people too, and you need to give people what you yourself feel comfortable with," he said. "Some of the young designers in my office may have innovative ideas that go too far, and I ask them, 'Would you implement this design in your own home?' They would say, 'No, no, I wouldn't.' And then I ask, 'Why do you want for others when you don't want it for yourself?'"

Liu's architectural soul probably sprang from his love of arts and literature. Born into a family of doctors, he was not interested in following in family footsteps, eschewing medicine for studies in writing and painting.

After graduating from Chongqing University in 1982 with an architectural engineering degree, he first became a writer while working at the Chengdu Architectural Design and Research Institute. His first short story was entitled "Highland."

Liu became a full-time writer for several years until the early 1990s, when his design for an artist's studio transformed him into a full-time architect.

Liu, however, never abandoned literature and art. In China, he is known for a circle of Chengdu friends who include poet Zhai Yongming, winner of the international literary award Ceppo Pistoia in 2011, and artist He Duoling, an oil painting professor at the Chengdu Academy of Fine Arts.

"I've never left my friends even though I don't write much anymore," he said. "It's tiresome work designing architecture, and it's tiresome work writing novels. You can't expect to do both at the same time. Yet I'm still a good audience for my friends. They love to read me poems they write. We don't have academic discussion every day, yet our mutual influences create creative soil."

The last novel Liu published was in 2014, entitled "Lunar Conception (明月构想)." It is a dystopian story about an architect named Ouyang Jiangshan, who wants to build a new city from scratch -- a "heaven on earth" to remold people's souls. Yet the grand plan flops when it is on the verge of success.

The story manifests Liu's sentiments on architecture, urban planning and the relationship between people and cities. It raises a question: Should architects influence people's lives and minds through their designs, or should they reflect what has already been molded, including environment, customs and folk habits?

Liu chooses the latter.

"I prioritize mobilizing existing resources over chasing novel concepts," he said. "The key lies in skillfully combining locally available materials, eco-friendly principles and contextual requirements to create harmonious solution‌s."

That concept is perfectly revealed in Liu's Mrgadava The Private Museum Of Carved Stone Arts, also known as Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Art Museum, in Chengdu, which displays Buddhist arts. It is a private museum built in the middle of a bamboo forest. When Liu observed the site before designing, he was determined not to remove the bamboo or hollow it out.

"I found no reason to damage the forest," he said. "So I managed to build in a natural clearing, like sneaking a pin in a crack. The clearing, the construction and the forest can all serve as exhibition halls, so it forms spaces that are interconnected. This kind of wild vibe suits Chengdu very well."

He also designed the Shanghai campus of pharmaceutical company Novartis in 2014, and four years later was commissioned to design the Serpentine Pavilion in Beijing, which drew international attention.

His designs have been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale and a solo exhibition at Berlin's Aedes Gallery.

Winning the Pritzker prize was an honor but perhaps not a complete surprise for Liu. It doesn't seem to signal any sharp change in his life.

"I was happy, of course, to learn the news," he said, "but I still have many works to finish, so I just got back to work."

The Pritzker jury praised his "reverence for culture, history and nature, chronicling time and comforting users with familiarity through modern interpretations of classic Chinese architecture."

It also said, "Liu Jiakun takes present realities and handles them to the point of offering sometimes a whole new scenario of daily life. Beyond knowledge and techniques, common sense and wisdom are the most powerful tools he adds to the designer's toolbox."