Financial Times reviews the exhibition about Kaplický

London - Jan Kaplický was one of the great visionaries of architecture of our time, even though architects who are usually labeled as visionaries don't often build many structures and their influence was more significant than their realized works. This was reported today by the British newspaper Financial Times about the exhibition of the recently deceased Czech architect's work at the London Design Museum.
    When his designs are gathered together, Kaplický's immense influence, his visionary qualities, and perhaps his sheer madness are apparent, wrote the reviewer. When he expressed regret that this "gentleman architect" hadn’t realized more projects, the exhibition curator and director of the Design Museum, Dejan Sudjic, replied: "The fact that he built at least something is amazing."
    "And it was amazing... he realized the journalists' stand at the cricket stadium Lords and the massive blind blob of the Selfridges department store in Birmingham, as well as remarkable houses," the paper stated in a lengthy review, which looks back on Kaplický's life and his projects.
    It’s hard not to see the influence of his shocking phallic skyscraper design from 1990 on the Swiss Re insurance building nicknamed the Gherkin, which was built in London by Norman Foster, the paper noted. According to it, Kaplický's design for a museum on the Paris waterfront Quai Branly was much better than the building that was eventually built. The exhibition concludes with the jellyfish of the Prague National Library. The victory of this design in the competition and the subsequent disdain of the Czech political establishment engaged and outraged Kaplický, the newspaper recalled.
    According to it, "Kaplický represented something of the worst excesses of contemporary architecture." "He was always - and gladly - a lonely genius fighting against a stupid establishment without imagination. The exhibition clearly proves this. It is a collection of sculptural objects that do not regard context," the Financial Times wrote.
    "But he was also so unique and so creative that it is hard not to be swept away. It is a small exhibition without drawings (his sketches were beautiful)... But it was organized in haste in response to his death, and it is good that it is happening at all. You wouldn’t want to live in a world built by Kaplický. But what a wonderful dream," concluded the critic of the British newspaper in his review.