“…reveal something, abstract, distill and make visible the inherent qualities of local people (…) create atmospheres, offering a sense of serenity and poetry, evoking compassion and mercy, and cultivating a sense of shared community”. This is the mission that Liu Jiakun, Pritzker Prize 2025 Laureate, envisions for architecture.
A mission that in a career spanning 40 years has translated into the creation of space, “the luxury of space”, of public and shared in the fabric of China’s major cities, where it is often lacking. An emotionally charged space, such as that of the Shujinfang Museum and the West Village, but also capable of collapsing the scale of the macro-objects, the large scale phenomena, into the small scale of intimacy and memory. This is how his 2008 memorial to Hu Huishan, a teenager who died in the Sichuan earthquake that year, came about. Liu took Domus on a discovery tour of this small architectural tent in 2009, in a story edited by Laura Bossi.
In memory of Hu Huishan
A student at the Juyuan middle school in the city of Dujiangyan, like all kids her age Hu Huishan was a fan of music, film and sport. If it weren’t for the likes of Chinese architect Liu Jiakun, we would have known little of her or the thousands of others whose lives were shattered on 12 May 2008 by the Sichuan earthquake. After meeting Hu Huishan’s parents and visiting her school – which collapsed on the young students during the earthquake like a house of cards – Liu Jiakun decided to commemorate her brief existence by designing and constructing a small memorial. Surrounded by trees, the building is symbolically shaped like a makeshift tent. Compact and clad on the outside with grey render, the interior is lit up by the colour pink, which was Hu’s favourite colour. Inside are all the things that were dear to Hu Huishan in her everyday life: her text books, schoolbag, notebooks and diaries, her badminton racket…
According to Liu Jiakun, “Although it is small, this memorial is big enough to become part of the collective memory of the earthquake. Despite its size, it is the most meaningful work I have done in my whole architectural career.”
Opening image: Hu Huishan Memorial, Chengdu, People's Republic of China. Photo courtesy of Jiakun Architects