maxglute 3 days ago

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 3 days ago

    Would you mind sharing those people/firms?

    • maxglute 3 days ago

      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.

pyb 3 days ago

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 3 days ago

    The shed is a relief tent that is a memorial to an earthquake where they were used.

vonneumannstan 3 days ago

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...

doitLP 3 days ago

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 3 days ago

    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.

    • perching_aix 3 days ago

      > 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 3 days ago

        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 3 days ago

          So you picked traits you feel are associated with that label and checked how much they apply?

          ... so still subjectively?

          • donkeybeer 3 days ago

            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 3 days ago

              ... 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 3 days ago

                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 3 days ago

                  It was, true. Oh well, let's see how they and others respond to it all.

                  • donkeybeer 3 days ago

                    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 3 days ago

                      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 3 days ago

                        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 3 days ago

                          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.

    • iandanforth 3 days ago

      Regardless of material, these examples are hideous.

    • dr-smooth 3 days ago

      Today I learned that in British English, "homely" is a positive trait when referring to a place.