Die Agenda für Baukultur
September 2026
Openings 3/4 | Smiljan Radić Clarke: Stability
Public Lecture followed by a conversation with Enrique Walker
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Smiljan Radić Clarke (Santiago, Chile, 1965) graduated from the Catholic University of Chile in 1989 and pursued further studies at the Istitutto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, Italy. After three years of travel and exploration, he established his own architecture studio in Chile in 1995.
He has received numerous awards and recognitions throughout his career. In 2001, he was named Best Architect Under 35 by the College of Architects of Chile. In 2008, he received the Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard Award, and in 2009, he was named an Honorary Member of the American Institute of Architects. He was awarded Best Career in 2013, and his buildings were recognized as Best Chilean Building in 2015 and 2018 by Universidad Mayor de Chile. In 2015, he received the Oris Award in Croatia. In 2018, he was honored with the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (USA). That same year, his Bío Bío Theater was nominated as one of the Best Buildings of 2018 by Architectural Record. In 2020, he was awarded the Attolini Medal by Anáhuac University in Mexico and he was named an honorary fellowship of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 2022, he received the Gran Premio at the Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito, Ecuador. In 2026, he received the Pritzker Architecture Prize and National Architecture Award in Chile.
He has won several international architecture competitions. His most recent wins including Bío Bío Regional Theater, Concepción, Chile (2012) with Eduardo Castillo and Gabriela Medrano, Santiago Telecommunication Tower, Chile (2014), Chilean Pavilion, Expo Dubai, Dubai (2019) with Paula Velasco and Cecilia Puga, Secret Garden, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Haya (2023) with Marcela Correa, Multifunctional Palace and Renovation of the Palace of Telecommunications, Fira Barcelona, Spain (2025) with Miquel Marine, Cesar Rueda and Beatriz Borque.
Smiljan Radić is the president of the Fundación de Arquitectura Frágil, which has organized seminars and exhibitions such as Other People Have Dogs at Galería D21, Santiago, Chile (2017), in collaboration with Fundació Miralles, Barcelona; Cloud '68: Paper Voices in collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist at ETH Zurich (2017) and in Santiago, Chile (2018); and Tiras de Prueba, which will open to the public in October 2025 at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile. The aim of the foundation is to promote the study and dissemination of Experimental Architecture—or that of an Improbable Reality—in which the boundaries of the architectural discipline are blurred.
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Openings is a series of keynote lectures organized by architecture critic Enrique Walker and hosted at the beginning of each semester at the Accademia di architettura in Mendrisio, from September 2025 to February 2027. It brings together four architecture practices, which are invited to revisit certain of their projects, and stage a conversation on their work and architecture culture at large. The series focuses in particular on the concepts that followed the design of a project; on the arguments that derived from, were triggered by, or potentially outlived the making of a building. In other words, it examines architecture in hindsight, by virtue of storytelling, to point to those moments that might have instigated a finding, a definition, an opening.
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The Lecture is streamed live on www.arc.usi.ch
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