Jan Kaplický

18 April 1937, Prague – 14 January 2009, Prague

Jan Kaplický was born into a family of Prague artists. In 1962 he graduated from architecture at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and worked as a freelancer. In 1968 he emigrated to Great Britain. From 1969 to 1971 he worked in the studio Denys Lasdun & Partners and from 1971 to 1973 he worked for the atelier of renowned British architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, where he worked on the design of the museum Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. In 1973 he and David Nixon founded the architectural studio Future Systems, in which he worked until his death. He also worked with his partners (he has a son, Joseph, with Amanda Levete). After 1989 he began visiting his homeland. He tried to implement his projects there. He married Eliška Fuchsová, who gave birth to their daughter on the day of sudden death.

Jan Kaplický is a representative of high-tech architecture. He was inspired by nature and experimented with organic architecture based on natural shapes. His buildings are characterised by experimentation and vision reaching to the 22^nd century. He worked and was friends with architects Richard Rogers and Norman Foster. Together with Amanda Levete, he worked on projects for NASA, where he worked with modern materials and technologies.

He achieved international recognition primarily for his design of the shopping centre Selfridges in Birmingham and the press centre at the cricket stadium Lord’s Media Centre in London. His other projects include the Docklands Floating Bridge, the Way-in boutique in London and boutique Comme des Garçons in New York, Tokio and Paris. He also designed the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena, Italy. However, many of his futuristic projects were never built. His projects in the Czech Republic were also left unbuilt, especially the National Library project at Letná in Prague (known as Octopus) and the Antonín Dvořák concert and congress centre in České Budějovice (called Rejnok). This fact weighed heavy on him. Kaplický also designed the golf club Volavka at Konopiště. In Prague, only a house in Braník and a ramp at the house of screenwriter Jaroslav Dietl were built, both designed before his emigration.

Kaplický also designed consumer products, dishes and clothes.

Jan Kaplický taught at many universities abroad and wrote professional and popular books. He received several awards, e.g. the most prestigious British award for architecture, the Stirling Prize. In October 2008 he refused to accept an award from the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic as a sign of protest against the failure to build his Octopus project.

Visionary Czech architect Jan Kaplický was buried in Vyšehrad cemetery and a commemorative plaque was unveiled on the house in the Street of the Czechoslovak Army in front of which he died.