Chile’s Smiljan Radić Clarke has been named the 2026 recipient of the heralded Pritzker Architecture Prize for his “optimistic and joyful” modern works. While the 60-year-old’s most recognized structure is likely the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion in London, his works span cultural institutions, civic spaces, commercial residences, and more.
“Through a body of work positioned at the crossroads of uncertainty, material experimentation, and cultural memory, Smiljan Radić favors fragility over any unwarranted claim to certainty,” the Jury Citation states, in part. “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.”
Rather than follow a uniform formula, Clarke approaches each project as a site-specific commission, with leading examples including Pite House, located on the rocky cliffside in Papudo, Chile, NAVE Performing Arts Center in Santiago, Chile, and the Vik Millahue Winery in Millahue, Chile.
“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,” says Radić. “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.”
