The 2014 Serpentine Pavilion architect was named winner of the title – considered the world’s most prestigious architecture prize globally – last week. Judges praised his ‘body of work positioned at the crossroads of uncertainty, material experimentation, and cultural memory’. 

The jury, headed by 2016 Pritzker Prize Laureate and fellow Chilean Alejandro Aravena, said Radić’s 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 is best known in the UK for his Serpentine Pavilion of 2014, a 170m2 structure made from fibreglass and resembling a semi-translucent shell resting on large stones. The structure was later relocated from Kensington Gardens in west London to the gardens of the Hauser & Wirth gallery and arts centre at Durslade Farm, Bruton, Somerset.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, photo courtesy of Iwan Baan

His practice Smiljan Radić, founded in Santiago in 1995, also created the London Sky Bubble temporarily installed on the roof of Tobacco Dock, east London, for fashion house Alexander McQueen in 2021.

Radić’s work includes the Teatro Regional del Biobío (2018), a Chilean performing arts centre wrapped in translucent polycarbonate panels, the Vik Millahue Winery (2013), The Boy Hidden in a Fish, with Marcela Correa, for the 12th International Architecture Biennale of Venice (Venice, Italy, 2010), and CR House (Santiago, Chile, 2003).

The jury described his work as creating ‘unobvious connections and patterns of circulation [which] offer a multiplicity of stages for users to act, interact, and even change the narratives that unfold within them’.

Aravena said: ‘The masterful composition of volumes and the precise calibration of scales lend a sense of monumentality to the everyday life, whether experienced at an individual or public level.

‘In Radić’s architecture, monumental presence is reworked through fragility, lightness and apparent instability, achieved not through scale alone, but through atmosphere, material tension and spatial intensity.’

Teatro Regional del Bío-Bío, photo courtesy of Iwan Baan

This year’s jury included former Pritzker laureates Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA and Anne Lacaton of Lacaton & Vassal, as well as American architect Deborah Berke, American academic Barry Bergdoll, and Brazil’s energy and climate secretary, André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, among others.

The announcement of the 2026 Pritzker was reportedly delayed by the stepping down of Thomas Pritzker as executive chairman of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation – the sponsor of the Pritzker Prize – following scrutiny of his links with Epstein.

The AJ reported that Pritzker’s name appeared several times in files relating to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which also contains references to architects, including Frank Gehry, and practices such as Gensler.

The 75-year-old Pritzker said in a statement in February that good stewardship of the hotels company required him to stand down ‘particularly in the context of my association with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, which I deeply regret’, according to Business Wire.

He added: ‘I exercised terrible judgment in maintaining contact with them, and there is no excuse for failing to distance myself sooner. I condemn the actions and the harm caused by Epstein and Maxwell and I feel deep sorrow for the pain they inflicted on their victims.’

The AJ understands that the Hyatt Foundation will continue to sponsor the Pritzker Prize and that the billionaire heir will remain involved in the event.

Last year’s Pritzker Prize went to Chengdu, China-based Liu Jiakun.

In 2023 the award was given to David Chipperfield, who became only the fifth British winner since the award’s creation in 1979 and came more than 15 years after Richard Rogers collected the prize in 2007. Chipperfield’s first major UK building, the River & Rowing Museum in Henley, is currently subject to a listing bid.

Previous Pritzker laureates include the late Indian architect Balkrishna Vithaldas (BV) Doshi, Berlin-based Francis Kéré (in 2022) and the late Zaha Hadid in 2004.

Pritzker Prize winners

2026 Smiljan Radić Clarke (60), Chile
2025 Liu Jiakun (68), China
2024 Riken Yamamoto (78), Japan
2023 David Chipperfield (69), UK
2022 Diébédo Francis Kéré (56), Burkina Faso/Germany
2021 Anne Lacaton (65) and Jean-Philippe Vassal (67), France
2020 Yvonne Farrell (69) and Shelley McNamara (68), Ireland
2019 Arata Isozaki (87), Japan
2018 Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi (90), India
2017 Rafael Aranda (55) Carme Pigem (54) and Ramon Vilalta (56) of RCR Arquitectes, Spain
2016 Alejandro Aravena (48), Chile
2015 Frei Otto (89), Germany
2014 Shigeru Ban (56), Japan
2013 Toyo Ito (71), Japan
2012 Wang Shu (48), China
2011 Eduardo Souto de Moura (58), Portugal
2010 Kazuyo Sejima (54) and Ryue Nishizawa (44), Japan
2009 Peter Zumthor (65), Switzerland
2008 Jean Nouvel (62), France
2007 Richard Rogers (73), UK
2006 Paulo Mendes da Rocha (77), Brazil
2005 Thom Mayne (61), USA
2004 Zaha Hadid (53), UK
2003 Jorn Utzon (84), Denmark
2002 Glenn Murcutt (66), Australia
2001 Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (51), Switzerland
2000 Rem Koolhaas (56), Netherlands
1999 Norman Foster (63), UK
1998 Renzo Piano (60), Italy
1997 Sverre Fehn (72), Norway
1996 Rafael Moneo (58), Spain
1995 Tadao Ando (53), Japan
1994 Christian de Portzamparc (50), France
1993 Fumihiko Maki (65), Japan
1992 Alvaro Siza (57), Portugal
1991 Robert Venturi (65), USA
1990 Aldo Rossi, (59), Italy
1989 Frank Gehry (60), USA
=1988 Oscar Niemeyer (81), Brazil
=1988 Gordon Bunshaft (79), USA
1987 Kenzo Tange (73), Japan
1986 Gottfried Bohm (66), Germany
1985 Hans Hollein (51), Austria
1984 Richard Meier (49), USA
1983 IM Pei (66), China
1982 Kevin Roche (60), USA
1981 James Stirling (55), UK
1980 Luis Barragan (78), Mexico
1979 Philip Johnson (73), USA

Vik Millahue Winery, photo courtesy of Cristobal Palma