The 2026 Pritzker Architecture Prize has been awarded to Smiljan Radić Clarke, the Chilean architect who founded his studio in Santiago in 1995. His architecture is marked by vulnerability and a strong emotional presence — an “architecture as an act of faith,” as Domus editorial director Walter Mariotti writes — made of buildings that seem to protect and welcome people rather than astonish them, designed to capture the essence of places together with the passing of time and the shifting qualities of light. The Pritzker jury stated: “Through a body of work positioned at the crossroads of uncertainty, material experimentation, and cultural memory, Smiljan Radić favours fragility over any unwarranted claim to certainty. His buildings 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.” Radić himself has described architecture as existing in a constant tension between permanence and fragility: “Architecture exists between large, massive, and enduring forms—structures that stand under the sun for centuries, waiting for our visit—and smaller, fragile constructions—fleeting as the life of a fly, often without a clear destiny under conventional light. Within this tension of disparate times, 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.”
Understanding Smiljan Radić Clarke, Pritzker Architecture Prize 2026 Laureate, through 5 main projects
The Chilean architect has been awarded the highest honour in the field of architecture. Here is a selection of his most important designs.
Photo Iwan Baan
Photo Cristobal Palma
Photo Iwan Baan
Photo Hisao Suzuki
Photo Cristobal Palma
Photo Cristobal Palma
Photo Cristobal Palma
Photo Cristobal Palma
Photo Iwan Baan
Photo Iwan Baan
Photo Iwan Baan
Photo Iwan Baan
Photo Smiljan Radić
Photo Smiljan Radić
Photo Smiljan Radić
Photo Smiljan Radić
Photo Cristobal Palma
Photo Cristobal Palma
Photo Cristobal Palma
Photo Hisao Suzuki
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- La redazione di Domus
- 12 March 2026
Among the works that most clearly reveal his design approach, his interpretation of the Serpentine Pavilion 2014 is perhaps the most internationally recognised: a light, almost primitive structure — a translucent shell supported by large natural stones that transforms the pavilion into a temporary refuge within the landscape of Kensington Gardens. The relationship between architecture and landscape returns in many of Radić’s works, whose buildings are often oriented to shield themselves from wind, filter light or frame fragments of territory, establishing a direct dialogue with the surrounding environment. This is the case of Casa Pite, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, or the Carbonero House, set in the Chilean countryside. The same approach also emerges in urban interventions such as the Teatro Regional del Bío-Bío in Concepción, and the NAVE Cultural Center, which was created through the reuse of a building damaged by the 2010 Chile earthquake.
Located along the Bío-Bío River in Concepción—Chile’s second-largest metropolitan area and one of the country’s most important cultural hubs—this theatre appears as a luminous lantern within the urban landscape. The building is wrapped in a semi-transparent skin that filters natural light, transforming its appearance from day to night. Inside, the music and performance halls are organized as distinct volumes enclosed within a larger envelope, while the public spaces and foyers open toward the river.
The NAVE Cultural Center was created through the adaptive reuse of an industrial building damaged by the major Chilean earthquake of 2010, one of the strongest seismic events recorded in recent history. Radić preserves the building’s existing structure while inserting new volumes—reconfigurable spaces dedicated to theatre rehearsals, performances, workshops, and artist residencies. On the roof, a brightly colored circus tent evokes the idea of the cultural center as a place of gathering and collective celebration.
Designed for the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Kensington Gardens, the temporary pavilion by Smiljan Radić, completed in 2014, appears as a light, almost transparent structure. A translucent fiberglass shell rests on large natural boulders, creating a striking contrast that recalls the tradition of garden follies—small, imaginative architectural structures found in European parks between the 17th and 19th centuries. Inside, filtered light and the pavilion’s openness to the surrounding park create a space for pause and contemplation, an introverted refuge yet deeply immersed in the landscape that many have read as a contemporary evocation of the primitive hut.
A large sphere of raw earth punctured by small openings emerges in the rural landscape of Culiprán, Chile. With the Carbonero House (1999), Radić revisits the traditional form of the kilns used to produce charcoal in the Chilean countryside, built with clay, straw, and wood. More than a building, the structure appears as an archaic sculpture in the landscape.
Overlooking the Pacific coast in Papudo, Chile, the Pite House is conceived as a compact mass opening toward the horizon of the ocean. The building is oriented to protect itself from the coastal winds, organizing the interior spaces around views of the sea. Set among the rocks of the promontory, the house maintains an austere, almost monolithic character, establishing a direct relationship with the landscape and with the changing light throughout the day.