Smiljan Radić Clarke Wins 2026 Pritzker Prize
7March 13, 2026
Chilean architectSmiljan Radić Clarkehas been named the winner of the 2026Pritzker Prize, architecture’s most prestigious honor. Born in Santiago to a father and mother who immigrated there from Croatia and the United Kingdom, respectively, he is the second Chilean architect to win the award since it was established in 1979. Though he uses only his father’s surname, Radić, professionally, the architect asked Pritzker officials to include his mother’s last name in announcing his win, in order to honor her too. Radić will receive $100,000 and a bronze medallion.
The sixty-year-old Radić is known for understated structures ranging from the modest (a bus stop, an artist’s studio) to the major (performing art spaces, a winery). Characterized not by a signature appearance, his work is instead united by his approach to each project that takes into account its purpose and surrounds. His attention to environment and use can be seen in his 2018Teatro Regional del Biobío, Concepción, Chile;his 2014Serpentine Pavilion, temporarily erected in London; his2013House for the Poem of the Right Angle, Vilches, Chile; and hisVik Millahue Winery, Millahue, Chile, built that same year.
“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,” wrote the prize jury in its citation. “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.”
The announcement of Radić’s win was delayed as the Pritzker Foundation, which administers the prize, struggled with the news that its director, Tom Pritzker, had ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Pritzker resigned as the executive chair of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation, and prize spokesperson Eunice Kim told the New York Times that “space” had been established between Pritzker and the prize that bears his name.
“This sad moment in history is not the best circumstance in which to receive an award,” Radić told NPR in response to a query about architecture’s importance at a time when so many significant buildings around the world are being destroyed. “Still, I believe that architecture is a positive act—it helps create concrete realities where people can value their surroundings in a different way.”