(1937-2009)

The German occupation first, and the Soviet one second, marked the childhood and youth of the Czech Jan Kaplicky, architect exiled in London as a consequence of the dramatic events occurred in in the Prague Spring, in 1968. In the British capital, and after working for Richard Rogers – with whom he collaborated in the design of the Centre Pompidou – and Norman?Foster, Kaplicky opened his own studio in 1979 under the name Future Systems. After a decade of avant-garde projects confined to paper, in 1989 he began a new phase with his first wife, Amanda Levete, with whom he developed the first works that would obtain international recognition, like the Lord’s Stadium Media Stand (completed in 1999) or the Selfridges Department Store in Birmingham?(finished in 2003). The building for the National?Library of the Czech Republic in Prague, winner of a competition held in 2007, was his main project in progress; a proposal that made up for the frustrated dream of building the National Library of France, which was finally carried out by the French architect Dominique Perrault.