17 Facts About Wang Shu

Wang Shu is a Chinese architect based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.

Wang Shu is the dean of the School of Architecture of the China Academy of Art.

In 2012, Wang became the first Chinese citizen to win the Pritzker Prize, the world's top prize in architecture.

Wang Shu was born on 4 November 1963 in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China's far west.

Wang Shu began to draw and paint as a child, without any formal training in art.

Wang Shu worked for the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts and in 1990 completed his first architectural project, a youth centre in the city of Haining near Hangzhou.

Wang Shu did not have any commissions between 1990 and 1998.

Wang Shu joined the faculty of the China Academy of Art in 2000 as a professor, became the Head of the Architecture Department in 2003, and was named Dean of the School of Architecture in 2007.

In 2000, Wang Shu designed the Library of Wenzheng College at Soochow University, which won the inaugural Architecture Art Award of China in 2004.

Wang Shu's Five Scattered Houses in Ningbo won the Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction in the Asia Pacific in 2005.

Wang Shu's architecture has been described as "opening new horizons while at the same time resonates with place and memory", experimental, and as a rare example of critical regionalism in China.

Wang Shu creates modern buildings making use of traditional materials and applying older techniques.

Wang Shu is a keen supporter of architectural heritage where globalisation has stripped cities of their special attributes.

Ironically, with his manner of seamlessly meshing the contemporary with the cultural, innovation with tradition, Wang Shu's work has come to define itself.

Wang Shu's father is a musician and an amateur carpenter.

Wang Shu's mother is a teacher and school librarian in Beijing.

Wang Shu is married to Lu Wenyu, who is his business partner and fellow professor of architecture at the China Academy of Art.