Czech architects are conquering the world. From Britain to China to North America

There are not many of them, but their trace is clearly visible. Some Czech architects have also collaborated with world-class people such as Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers or Zaha Hadid. Look what they did.

20 years ago, he was known in the Czech Republic only to people in the field. However, in the world and especially in Great Britain, where he emigrated in 1968, Jan Kaplický paid for the concept. Many of his designs did not materialize, but his futurism influenced a generation of architects.

The best known are his Selfridges department store in Birmingham, the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena and the journalist’s center at Lord’s in London, for which the architect also received the prestigious Pritzker Prize. Kaplický also collaborated with Renz Piano and Richard Rogers at the George Pompidou Center in Paris. In 1976, he co-founded the Future Systems studio, which he ran until his death in 2009. In the Czech Republic, he became famous for his designs for a new building of the National Library in Prague called Octopus and a concert “Rejnok” for České Budějovice.

Eva Jiřičná, a native of Zlín, also settled in Britain after emigrating. The hi-tech architect has not worked on large projects abroad, although she also has a transport terminal in London and an extension of the library in Leicester. She gained a foothold mainly in the interiors of shops and museums, attracted by dematerialized steel and glass staircases. Her work can be seen in London at the Somerset House complex, at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts, or at the New York Historical Society Museum in the United States.

She has worked for Boodles and Harrods, Joan & David, Hugo Boss and Joseph or Vitra. In recent years, there has been interest in her designs in the Czech Republic, where she and Petr Vágner run the AI-Design office. The most famous are the Hotel Josef and Café Braun in Prague, the orangery at Prague Castle and the congress and university center in Zlín. He also devotes a lot of time to living.

The Bends felt limited in Czechoslovakia, and when they succeeded in an international competition in Japan in 1984, they emigrated to Canada. And success did not wait long for them. The biggest was the design of the Olympic Stadium and Village for Toronto’s ultimately unsuccessful Olympic candidacy for the Games in 1996. In Canada, Ivana Bendová designed a number of administrative and airport buildings.

Thanks to working at Bregman + Hamann Architects, the couple moved to China and founded Allied Architects International, now a company with 250 employees. They were solving, for example, a city center project for a million people or an urban complex with three million square meters. They built a 270-meter skyscraper in Shanghai and won several awards for the Tonino Lamborghini Hotel in Suzhou. They later returned to Canada and switched to housing. They consider their own house to be the most important project in recent years.

The architect, originally from Hořice, went to San Francisco for two years to study. There she understood how important travel is to an architect’s perspective. After school, she found a job in China, and since 2005 it has been her main place of work, at one time in the Bend couple’s office. However, he has lived in Pacific New Caledonia for 10 years and travels 10,000 kilometers to China. She also learned to work out giant projects down to the last detail, thanks to which she can defeat even large companies in competitions.

She designed 25 skyscrapers, the city of Yuchan New City for a million people, a number of office and industrial projects, luxury hotels, cultural and sports centers and a transport terminal. A few years ago, she was offered to run Zahy Hadid’s Chinese office, but in the end it didn’t work out.

For the last two years she has been lecturing in the Czech Republic and Australia. Due to the pandemic, she remained in New Caledonia, designing the interiors of cafes, restaurants and bars and various reconstructions. She also took part in a competition for a new library and the reconstruction of the Eiffel Pavilion in the capital Nouméa. During the lockdown, she wrote a book that will be published in the Czech Republic in the autumn.

Jakub Klaška studied architecture in Liberec, in Prague with Eva Jiřičná and in Vienna with Zaha Hadid. During school, he was an intern at the leading Dutch OMA office and at the Asymptote studio in New York. When he graduated, he headed to New York, but then preferred Zaha Hadid’s offer to work in her London office. Since then, London has been his home, in addition to designing, he also lectures here at the university.

He has been with Zaha Hadid Architects for 12 years. He is in charge of several projects a year, mostly in the initial stages. He has the most experience with football stadiums. He really appreciates the all-wood stadium for the English team Forrest Green Rovers, which is based on a sustainable lifestyle. He is now working at a stadium in Xi’an, China, which has to be completed in just 22 months.

From the beginning, he has also been involved in the Prague project at Masaryk Railway Station. He leads the design team and makes sure that the complex adheres to the design of the late Zaha Hadid even after the comments of the monuments and the city.

Martin Roubík’s life is connected with Norway, where he emigrated in the 1970s. He studied architecture in Oslo and Yokohama, Japan. He started in the office of Lund + Slaatto Arkitekter, later co-founded the office of Snøhett. He worked in it for 10 years as a partner, for example he designed the Museum of Art in Lillehammer, culminating in the construction of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt.

Regina Loukotová, later Roubík’s wife, was also at the internship in Snøhetta. She was also experienced in Vienna, in the 1990s in Prague she co-founded Atelier 1: 1 and later with Martin Roubík GEM architects. Their huge success was advancing to the finals of the competition at the Great Egyptian Museum in Giza.

They ran a studio together at the Czech Technical University, but considered establishing a school for foreign students. Martin Roubík died in 2008, but Regina Loukotová completed the idea. She opened the ARCHIP school in Prague in 2011 and has been leading her rector since then. The installation of glass in the East Bohemian Museum in Pardubice, which she created with Klára Doleželová, won the second prize in the Gloria Muzealis competition this year.