Wang Shu, an architect based in Hangzhou, China, on Monday received this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize.

'This is really a big surprise,' Mr. Wang, 48 years old, said in a statement. 'I suddenly realized that I've done many things over the last decade. It proves that earnest hard work and persistence lead to positive outcomes.'

Mr. Wang and his wife, Lu Wenyu, founded Amateur Architecture Studio (the name he explains as 'for myself, being an artisan or a craftsman, is an amateur or almost the same thing') in Hangzhou in 1997.

His work includes the Wenzheng College library at Suzhou University, which received the Architecture Arts Award of China in 2004; the Ningbo Contemporary Art Museum and Ningbo History Museum; and in Hangzhou, the first two phases of the Xiangshan campus of the China Academy of Art and the Vertical Courtyard Apartments.

Mr. Wang heads the architecture department at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou and has taught or lectured at Harvard, UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas.

'The fact that an architect from China has been selected by the jury represents a significant step in acknowledging the role that China will play in the development of architectural ideals,' Thomas J. Pritzker said in the prize announcement. 'Over the coming decades China's success at urbanization will be important to China and to the world. This urbanization, like urbanization around the world, needs to be in harmony with local needs and culture. China's unprecedented opportunities for urban planning and design will want to be in harmony with both its long and unique traditions of the past and with its future needs for sustainable development.'