Congratulations to Smiljan RadiÄ Clarke, 2026 !
Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
The Chilean Architect was named this yearâs recipient of architectureâs most prestigious award, joining the ranks of Frank Gehry, Robert Venturi or Zaha Hadid.
The descendant of Croatian immigrants to Chile, RadiÄ has built a portfolio of work primarily in South America, including private residences, cultural institutions, and commercial buildings.
His practice resists stylistic categorization, utilizing materials with heft like stone, wood, and metals set against transparent glass, fabric, fiberglass and more.
Assembled in structures that read like an energy-rich Kandinsky painting or a Zen-like Torkwase Dyson sculpture, his work appears contradictory, both anchored to the earth while it stands on its tiptoes.
Mr RadiÄ first opened his practice in 1995 and quickly distinguished himself through an imaginative use of materials in stunning landscapes:
With 1995âs Casa Chica, he created a 300-square-foot home using only wood, upcycled doors, and plate glass that sit on granite slabs in a wooded area; later, his 2004 Copper House clad a family home in weighty, weathered copper tiles that seem to pull the sloped roof downward, while opposing floor-to-ceiling glass windows provide contrast, lightening the load on the surrounding undulated plain.
He progressed to larger commercial work, including the Mestizo restaurant in Santiago where, like Casa Chica, stoneâlarge, sculptural bouldersâbecame part of the buildingâs structural engineering. Collaborating with his wife, the sculptor Marcela Correa, these monumental stones support a steel trellis roof draped in a fabric canopy.
In 2024, RadiÄ launched the 'Fundation de Arquitectura Fragil'Â (Foundation for Fragile Architecture), which acts as a home for his practice as well as an extensive archive of his collected books and ephemera from 20th-century radical architecture movements.Â
Online, his buildings are scattered across interviews and articles, photo galleries; he speaks frequently of poetry, philosophy, and fine arts, framing his architectural thinking as a sort of interdisciplinary intellectual endeavor.
Casa para el Poema del Ăngulo Recto, Vilches, Chile, 2010-2012,
Inspired by Le Corbusierâs poetic text Poème de lâAngle Droit, this house stands in a forested landscape near the Andes. The design combines cylindrical and angular volumes, creating an expressive form embedded into the hillside. The building moves visitors from dark entry spaces to light-filled interiors, using geometry and light as key spatial elements.
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