Lord's 'UFO' architect Jan Kaplicky dies

Rowan Moore, Architecture Critic
16.01.09

JAN KAPLICKY, one of the most original and inventive London architects, has died aged 71.

Kaplicky emigrated from his native Prague in 1968 and worked for both Norman Foster and Richard Rogers before setting up his own practice, Future Systems, in 1979. He was fascinated by the technology of cars, planes and of the US space programme, and wanted to apply it to buildings.

In partnership with his first wife Amanda Levete, he designed the Media Centre at Lord's Cricket Ground, a curvaceous white structure often compared to a UFO. It won the 1999 Stirling Prize. Future Systems' design for a new Selfridges in Birmingham also won plaudits.

Kaplicky had been battling to build his design for a national library in Prague, derided by critics as "an octopus". He died there from a suspected heart failure hours after the birth of his daughter by second wife Eliska Kaplicky Fuchsova.

Article/photo/comments:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23621059-details/Lord's+'UFO'+architect+Jan+Kaplicky+dies/article.do

Radical architect Jan Kaplickı dies

Robert Booth guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 15 January 2009 15.03 GMT

Jan Kaplickı, one of the most radical architects of the last 40 years, has died while in pursuit of his vision for his most audacious building yet.

The 71-year-old designer behind the spacecraft-like media centre at Lord's cricket ground in London and the curvaceous, sequin-clad Selfridges in Birmingham collapsed in Prague last night. The Czech-born architect's octopus-shaped design for a new national library in Prague had won an international competition but failed to gain acceptance among Czech politicians and was subject to severe criticism from members of the architectural community.

Kaplickı, who had lived for 40 years in London, had been fighting hard to win support for what he hoped would be the "grand finale" to his career.

He collapsed walking along a street in the Czech capital but could not be resuscitated by the time paramedics were called. It happened just hours after the birth of his daughter Johanka by his second wife Eliska Kaplickı Fuchsova, a Czech TV producer with whom he had started a new life in his home country.

Richard Rogers, who first worked with Kaplickı in 1969 before Kaplickı established the innovative Future Systems practice in London, led tributes to a man he described as "one of a handful of brilliant architects and a true innovator"................

Whole obituary/photo here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jan/15/architect-jan-kaplicky-dies

Architect who put morals before money
By Edwin Heathcote

Published: January 16 2009 02:44

....That same year he also set up his own practice, Future Systems, a name that embodied his sci-fi, high-tech obsessions. Success took a long time coming. Kaplicky could be prickly and his extravagant designs could be as demanding on the budget as on the eye. His first major success came with the Lord's Media Stand (1994-99), an astonishing commission in a conservative world. Constructed using monocoque boat-building techniques, the shiny white blob is now among cricket's most recognisable landmarks. His international retail work for Marni, Comme des Garçons and New Look cemented his reputation and led to his commission for the huge new Selfridges in Birmingham's Bull Ring. An amorphous UFO sequinned in thousands of aluminium disks, the building was highly visible and just as controversial but it transformed the city centre. His brilliant, unbuilt, frankly phallic, skyscraper design of 1990 arguably influenced Foster's Gherkin, and may have been a better building..............

More here:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/407844d4-e35c-11dd-a5cf-0000779fd2ac.html