Jan Kaplický Drawings

Jan Kaplický (1937−2009) was a vision­ary archi­tect with a pas­sion for draw­ing. It was his way of dis­cov­er­ing, describ­ing and con­struct­ing; and through draw­ing he pre­sent­ed beguil­ing archi­tec­tur­al imagery of the high­est order. Many of his sketch­es, cut­away draw­ings and pho­tomon­tages are brought togeth­er and cel­e­brat­ed in this book. These draw­ings date from the ear­ly years of his inde­pen­dent prac­tice, Future Sys­tems, in the 1970s, to his final ink draw­ings, exe­cut­ed in the mid-1990s. Fea­tured projects range from design stud­ies for the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, under­tak­en with NASA, to the Media Cen­tre at Lord’s Crick­et Ground, in Lon­don, win­ner of the 1999 Stir­ling Prize. 

Richard Rogers (1933−2021) was an archi­tect of glob­al renown. He was one of the first peo­ple to recog­nise Jan Kaplick­ý’s tal­ent and offer him a place in his studio. 

Ivan Mar­golius is an archi­tect and author of books on art, archi­tec­ture, engi­neer­ing, design and auto­mo­bile his­to­ry. He col­lab­o­rat­ed on a num­ber of books with Jan Kaplický, includ­ing For Inspi­ra­tion Only.

Richard Rogers on Jan Kaplický: ​‘He was a draughts­man of genius. His spir­it­ed draw­ings were at the same time intri­cate and incred­i­bly eco­nom­i­cal, able to com­mu­ni­cate his space-age visions with just a few strokes of the pen.’

‘An instant clas­sic’
— RIBA Journal

‘Bar­barel­la meets Baroque’
— 032C Magazine

‘Some­thing for fans of Future Sys­tems to trea­sure.’
— RIAS Quarterly