[HN Gopher] Liu Jiakun Receives the 2025 Pritzker Architecture P...
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Liu Jiakun Receives the 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize
Author : pseudolus
Score : 45 points
Date : 2025-03-10 23:41 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pritzkerprize.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pritzkerprize.com)
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| Maoist Apartment blocks and hideous concrete monstrosities win
| you Architecture Prizes? Wtf is wrong with out society. Complete
| disdain for actual beauty that can add to human flourishing...
| foofoo55 wrote:
| They have their beauty as objects of art, but certainly not as
| a place that I would enjoy occupying or being around. Brutalist
| architecture with a Chinese flair.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Most of it doesn't look brutalist to me. See this for
| example: https://www.pritzkerprize.com/sites/default/files/st
| yles/max...
|
| It looks like a normal house just without paint.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| I bet you live in SF and find the Tenderloin 'pleasant' and
| 'not so bad if you don't go out at night or alone' too.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| I looked up Tenderloin and it all looks quite normal
| traditional architecture? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T
| enderloin,_San_Francisco#/med...
|
| Whats the problem there?
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| Ah yes when I'm surrounded by active drug users and the
| mentally ill my first thought is to architecture as well.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| And why do you think that matters to this topic at all? I
| don't live in SF I don't know about its crime rate. How
| on earth is the architectural quality in any way shape of
| form related to crime rates? Why even bring up such a
| ridiculous unrelated point?
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| Its about aesthetics and if you can't figure that out
| then its obvious why you find bleak soviet apartment
| blocks appealing and concrete bomb shelters.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| I don't live there so I can't comment on level of crime.
| But architecturally I find no fault here.
| nilstycho wrote:
| The Pritzker Prize leans modernist. If you prefer classical
| architecture, check out the Driehaus Prize [1]. The 2025
| laureate is Liam O'Connor.
|
| [1] https://driehausprize.nd.edu
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| Leans might be an understatement. But thanks, some faith has
| been restored in humanity.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Whats monstrous about it?
|
| These look very nice and livable.
| https://www.pritzkerprize.com/laureates/liu-jiakun#laureate-...
|
| The first one looks very homely. Good greenery, good sense of
| shades, cool gray concrete textures. (
| https://www.pritzkerprize.com/sites/default/files/styles/max...
| )
|
| This one doesn't look Maoist to me, looks very like a
| traditional hut.
| https://www.pritzkerprize.com/sites/default/files/styles/max...
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| >The first one looks very homely. Good greenery, good sense
| of shades, cool gray concrete textures. ( https://www.pritzke
| rprize.com/sites/default/files/styles/max... )
|
| It looks like poorly poured concrete...
|
| >This one doesn't look Maoist to me, looks very like a
| traditional hut. https://www.pritzkerprize.com/sites/default/
| files/styles/max...
|
| It looks like a bomb shelter...
|
| https://www.theplan.it/images/stories/gallery91318/design-
| de...
|
| That is objectively one of the bleakest pictures I have ever
| seen.
|
| This is supposed to be International Architecture Award
| Winning Quality?
|
| https://i.insider.com/5d409233100a247279644dd4?width=1000&fo.
| ..
|
| Who knew that half the buildings in Mirny, Siberia were
| considered works of art worthy of International Architecture
| Prizes lol.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Are you from a country where houses are made of wood?
|
| Brick and concrete is the common house building material in
| many parts of the world.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| The Siberian buildings look much different from the
| examples you gave. They look like generic rectangular
| apartment blocks.
|
| Whereas this for example looks not much different from the
| old European tile roof houses
| https://www.theplan.it/images/stories/gallery91318/design-
| de...
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| I genuinely weep for the soul of anyone who sees this: ht
| tps://www.theplan.it/images/stories/gallery91318/design-
| de... and thinks "Ah yes this is worthy of an
| International Award in Architecture"
| marssaxman wrote:
| I don't know where you're getting that. I opened the link with
| a heart full of skepticism, ready to scoff at some hideous,
| inhumane modern weirdness, but found instead pleasant
| environments, reasonable choices, and graceful use of practical
| materials. I doubt I'll ever go to China, but if I did, I can
| imagine enjoying a visit to some of those places.
| doitLP wrote:
| Ah, of course: inhuman concrete and strange angles and colors.
|
| My theory with all the high art that the "man in the street" sees
| as weird or childish garbage is this: if youre a critic or on the
| inside you've seen it all before and dissected it in such detail
| and tried everything that the only thing that can make you feel
| anything anymore is electric shocks right to your scrotum while
| listening to dubstep on the back of a birthing donkey. And so all
| the movies and art and architecture become just that, and you
| continue your retreat from the mainstream into your increasingly
| strange world. Because the fact is, good appealing art has pretty
| much been discovered but where's the fun (or profit) in that?
| donkeybeer wrote:
| You are seriously mistaking your personal preference for a
| universal human trait. Many of these buildings are very homely
| feeling.
|
| You probably might also come from a country where houses are
| built of wood. Wood isn't a common building material outside
| Europe and North America. Concrete and brick are most common.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Regardless of material, these examples are hideous.
| perching_aix wrote:
| > You are seriously mistaking your personal preference for a
| universal human trait. Many of these buildings are very
| homely feeling.
|
| Which you determined how exactly? Or are _your_ tastes
| universal?
|
| I don't think it's super fruitful to fight opinions with
| opinions at least.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| By most common factors of homeliness: greenery, shade, cool
| concrete/stone walls (concrete hatred might even be the
| minority viewpoint worldwide. Wood is not a common building
| material outside USA/Canada and Europe). Its not like those
| large glass walled open plan structures. The interior is
| secluded and hidden and so on.
| perching_aix wrote:
| So you picked traits you feel are associated with that
| label and checked how much they apply?
|
| ... so still subjectively?
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Yes as are all artistic opinions. But in fact I can have
| hard objective data in this, if you look up the normalcy
| of concrete as a building material worldwide. By this
| standard wood is weird and concrete is the normal thing.
| In any case there is no knee jerk aversion to the
| material. Perhaps its a thing in former communist
| countries and countries which defined themselves as
| hating these countries to see concrete as "cold".
| perching_aix wrote:
| ... which then matters only to the extent that any given
| characterization makes it so (which is again subjective).
| It makes the discussion more sophisticated, but
| nonetheless still just a clashing of personal
| preferences.
|
| I really don't see value in this. If it wasn't treated as
| a debate but as an exploration, an open ended discussion,
| then sure. But as it stands, this is just pointless.
| Literally "I don't like it vs. I do", just more
| elaborate, with a hint of mutual mislead of the other
| into thinking it's winnable.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| My comment is much less dismissive and ridiculous than
| the top comment I am replying to. I didn't say I hate
| wood or find it impossible people would like wood. If you
| wanted to look at it from the point of view of a debate
| vs exploration mine was closer to the exploration end.
| perching_aix wrote:
| It was, true. Oh well, let's see how they and others
| respond to it all.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| In architecture I almost never find anything really
| "objectionable" to the point of disgust. So to me I find
| it difficult to understand how some people can find
| themselves to get so worked up over architecture. At most
| the examples of "ugly" architecture cited by various
| people make me feel bland/unfeeling not disgusted.
| perching_aix wrote:
| I think it's not really the architecture they got ticked
| off about, but the praise vs. the architecture.
|
| To be more specific, it's not the "designs" that are
| their issue I don't think, but the extremeness of the gap
| between what they regard as their own taste or think of
| as common sense taste vs. what they can see here, and the
| extreme praise (an award) the latter is receiving despite
| that. It must be a baffling, cold shower like experience
| to them.
|
| I've had this with some TV shows, where I'd find them
| obnoxiously overrated, and their sheer mention would get
| pretty intense reactions out of me. Even though the shows
| were alright, just nowhere near what people represented
| them as.
|
| This can be generalized a bit, where if we concede that
| taste is subjective, then recognitions like these as a
| whole will come across as weird, if not
| counterproductive. I don't think that's the angle they
| were going for though. An analog I can think of from my
| own experiences is my distaste towards praising
| historical figures in literature (of all kinds, so incl.
| science and philosophy literature). It robs people of
| their own ambitions, I think.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| It could be but I was also speaking in a more general
| sense about having seen some people who seem literally
| disgusted about some architecture completely outside of
| any awards.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Ah I see. I do think some designs (architecture or
| otherwise) look pretty bad, even offensive (not in the
| culture war sense, but in the this hurts to look at
| sense), but there are some subject matters where my
| lowest is also just indifference. So I'd say this is a
| "to each their own" type of thing too.
| dr-smooth wrote:
| Today I learned that in British English, "homely" is a
| positive trait when referring to a place.
| pyb wrote:
| Browsing through the "selected works", some of the photos don't
| do him justice. There is some interesting stuff but also some
| drab apartment housing, and even a shed ?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The shed is a relief tent that is a memorial to an earthquake
| where they were used.
| maxglute wrote:
| Solid choice, Pritzker loves recognizing blending modernism and
| regional/vernacular. Pritzker is essentially lifetime achievement
| prize, have to examine entire body of work. When it comes to
| "developing" countries like PRC, obviously 50 year career will
| have some "dud" looking buildings constructed during period where
| country was poor as fuck. Part of the charm is appreciating how
| architects negotiate these conditions. Every few years Pritzker
| will recognize such works, i.e. Shu (china), Doshi (india), Kere
| (burkina faso), Rocha (brazil), the OG Barragan (mexico). IMO
| there's "better" Chinese architects pushing modern Chinese
| architecture, but they're all pretty young studios and won't get
| their due for decades.
| z2 wrote:
| Would you mind sharing those people/firms?
| maxglute wrote:
| Off top of my head: Vector, Atelier FCJZ, Neri&Hu, Atelier
| Deshaus, Urbanus, Tao+C, crossboundaries,
| ZAO/standardarchitecture, MAD (don't care for them).
|
| I'm not very good with architect names, but TLDR PRC
| iterating through their generations of western trained young
| architects -> domestic trained + western trained ->
| domestically trained talent pipeline. There's more and more
| solid work now, especially last 15 years when real money was
| being thrown at building (and crackdown on western
| starchitects). Also not saying they're better than Liu
| persay, but they're good glimpse at new gen portfolios in era
| where architects not limited to poverty resources. Some of
| portfolio is still pretty bill paying boring modernism, but
| every once in a while they'll throw out a nice local
| "critical regionalism" (i.e. opposite of generic
| internationalism) project that makes on go, yup that's what a
| nicely constructed "Chinese" building for xyz region should
| look like.
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