The winner of the 2026 Pritzker Prize, the world’s highest award for architecture, was Smiljan Radek Clark from Chile.
“In his work at the intersection of uncertainty, material experimentation and cultural memory, Smiljan Radić prefers the fragility of any unfounded claim to certainty,” the jury said in a statement on the award’s website. “His buildings appear tentative, unstable or deliberately incomplete – almost to the point of extinction – and yet they provide a structured, optimistic, calm and joyful refuge, accepting vulnerability as a prerequisite for life experience.”
Smiljan Radić lives and works in Santiago, where he founded the architectural firm Frágil in his studio. Radic created many of his works in collaboration with his wife, sculptor Marcela Correa. Their joint installation “The Boy Hidden in the Fish” was shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010. In 2014, Radic designed a temporary pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens in London.
The Pritzker Prize, called the Nobel Prize for Architecture, has been awarded since 1979. The winner receives a $100,000 cash reward.