Jan Kaplický Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Jan Kaplický (1937-2009) was a Czech-born British architect and the co-founder of Future Systems. Inspired by aircraft, space technology and nature, he produced visionary drawings of organic, high-tech buildings for decades before building the Lord’s Media Centre in London, which won the Stirling Prize in 1999, and the Selfridges department store in Birmingham, covered in thousands of aluminium discs.

Prague and exile

Kaplický was born in Prague in 1937 and studied architecture at the School of Applied Arts there, graduating in 1962. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 he emigrated to London, arriving with little more than a few drawings.

London offices

In London he worked for Denys Lasdun, for Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers on the Centre Pompidou and for Foster Associates. In 1979 he founded Future Systems with David Nixon, and from the late 1980s led it with Amanda Levete.

Future Systems

For years the practice was known mainly through drawings of houses, pods and space structures. Built works followed: the Malator House in Wales (1998), an earth-sheltered home with a glass eye on the sea; the Lord’s Media Centre (1999), an aluminium monocoque built by boatbuilders; and Selfridges in Birmingham (2003).

Last projects

In 2007 Kaplický won the competition for the National Library of the Czech Republic in Prague with a curving “blob” design that was never built. He died in Prague in January 2009. The Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena, designed by Future Systems, was completed after his death.