Humanity needs to build all kinds of structures to carry out its activities. Too often, the appearance of these constructions is subordinated solely to their function, without considering their impact on the landscape. Jan Kaplicky kept this in mind when he developed a series of structures based on organic forms, which are highly attractive without sacrificing functionality. Here are his most striking works.
Early Life and Escape from Prague
Jan Kaplicky was an architect whose name has gone practically unnoticed by all those not linked one way or another to architecture. He was born on April 18, 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, a country he left in 1968. Legend has it that after the USSR and its allies invaded his homeland during the Cold War—an event remembered as “Prague Spring”—Kaplicky fled to the United Kingdom with very little money and a change of clothes.
He settled in London, where he would live most of his life. Kaplicky was an architect, and an idea constantly revolved in his head: to build structures that combined the forms of nature with technology, something that—at least at that time—seemed contradictory and impossible to achieve.
Once established in London, he began working for Norman Foster. His ideas began to be known, and in fact they had great influence on works like the revolutionary Centre Pompidou in Paris. Ironically, not having a British passport, Kaplicky could not travel to France to follow the development of the work.
In 1979, Kaplicky got a garage in a Paddington alley and founded in it—after painting it pink—the studio Future Systems. Over the following decade, he devoted himself to projecting all kinds of revolutionary structures. Floating bridges, demountable buildings, shopping centres that looked like insects, electric cars or furniture (including his famous cloud-shaped sofas) came from the drawing board of this brilliant architect.
Not many architects had dared before to combine materials and forms in this way. Walls with fish-scale appearance, ceilings reminiscent of insects' faceted eyes, many curves where straight lines had traditionally reigned, and a complete integration with the landscape were basic elements of his works.
The English architect Amanda Levete, Kaplicky's wife, joined him in 1989. Future Systems moved to the couple's home. Their work began to become famous worldwide after a British parliament official commissioned them a house in Wales. Completely integrated with the landscape, in the shape of bubbles covered with vegetation and built with unconventional materials, this house became an icon of Kaplicky's ideas.
After this first great success, commissions began to arrive at Future Systems. Throughout the last ten years of the 20th century, Kaplicky's studio designed shops, shopping centres and several buildings, until in 1999 his press tribune designed for Lord's Cricket Ground in London received the Stirling Prize. This oval structure, almost all aluminium, constituted Kaplicky's definitive consecration. The world learned of his talent and many critics stopped thinking of him as a crank of forms and recognized him as what he was: a serious architect.
Among his most important works is the facade of the Selfridges department store in Birmingham, covered with aluminium discs. The Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena, as well as the Prague Library, became emblems of the new architecture. To direct this last project, Kaplicky returned to his hometown. He had divorced Levete before returning to Prague, and had rebuilt his life with a new woman, with whom he had his second daughter. On January 14, 2009, Jan Kaplicky died, victim of a heart attack, a few hours after his wife's death. His designs, with their own characteristics and become the best example that it is not necessary to build “buildings like boxes”, are considered among the boldest in the world.
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