Xu Tiantian Wins 2025 Wolf Prize in Architecture
The Wolf Foundation, which “both celebrates and promotes exceptional achievements in the Sciences and the Arts worldwide,” is giving its 2025 Wolf Prize in Architecture to Xu Tiantian, founding principal of Beijing's DnA_Design and Architecture.
Although the Wolf Prize is given annually in various fields—Medicine, Agriculture, Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Painting and Sculpture, Music, and Architecture—it has been three years since an architect received one of its $100,000 awards. Curiously, as if to do a little catching up on the paltry number of architecture awards handed out since the prize was established in 1978, the Wolf Foundation gave three architecture awards in 2022: Momoyo Kaijima and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of Atelier Bow-Wow, and Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro. (Also curious is the omission of the late Ricardo Scofidio in the latter's prize.) Xu Tiantian joins the 18 other architects (see the list at bottom) among the 382 Wolf Prize laureates recognized for “their outstanding achievements in advancing science and the arts for the betterment of humanity.”
Xu Tiantian is principal of DnA_Design and Architecture, the firm she founded in Beijing in 2004. Her firm is best known for projects in small villages in the Chinese countryside, especially in the Songyang region, where she applied a strategy of “architectural acupuncture” to small yet impactful interventions. These projects include a Tofu Factory in Caizhai Village and a Museum of Poetry in Songyang. Another standout project is DnA's conversion of former quarries in Jinyun County for cultural uses. For more about Xu Tiantian, read Eduard Kögel's 2022 interview with her, and watch Into the Island, the CCA documentary following her ongoing projects on Meizhou Island, in the Fujian province.
Tiantian Xu’s architecture is remarkably consistent: she favors natural materials such as wood, brick, stone, used sparingly but to great effect. Simple detailing foregrounds the materials themselves, rendering these projects – many of which are quite large in scale – surprisingly serene. Her architecture has transformed local village economies, making production more efficient, but also more elevated, more elegant. ¶ Tiantian Xu is awarded the Wolf Prize both for her outstanding design talent, as well as for her sensitivity and innovation in using that talent to the economic, social and cultural betterment of villages throughout rural China. Her work can be characterized as timeless and timely, paving the way to a better future – a time that lies ahead.
- Wolf Prize Laureate in Architecture 2025: Xu Tiantian
- Wolf Prize Laureates in Architecture 2022: Elizabeth Diller, Momoyo Kaijima, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto
- Wolf Prize Laureate in Architecture 2019: Moshe Safdie
- Wolf Prize Laureate in Architecture 2016: Phyllis Lambert
- Wolf Prize Laureate in Architecture 2013: Eduardo Souto de Mouro
- Wolf Prize Laureates in Architecture 2010: David Chipperfield, Peter Eisenman
- Wolf Prize Laureate in Architecture 2005: Jean Nouvel
- Wolf Prize Laureate in Architecture 2001: Álvaro Siza
- Wolf Prize Laureate in Architecture 1997: Frei Otto
- Wolf Prize Laureate in Architecture 1997/8: Aldo Van Eyck
- Wolf Prize Laureates in Architecture 1992: Frank O. Gehry, Denys Lasdun, Jørn Utzon
- Wolf Prize Laureates in Architecture 1988: Giancarlo De Carlo, Fumihiko Maki
- Wolf Prize Laureate in Architecture 1983/4: Ralph Erskine