#64 December 13, 2024

I recently received the Jan Kaplický Award from the Czech Republic. Jan Kaplický (1937-2009) who was from Prague worked on the design of the Centre Pompidou at the Renzo Piano + Richard Rogers Office, and founded Future Systems in 1979, making a large mark on the architectural world with organic and futuristic architecture.

I had a pleasant chat with Czech architects at the award ceremony in Prague, causing me to think a variety of things about the relationship between the Czech Republic as a location and my architecture.

The first thing that came to mind was the impact that I received from the architect Antonin Raymond (1888 – 1976) who was from the Czech Republic. The most shocking encounter that I had with Raymond’s architecture was in 1990 when I was shown Fusaichiro Inoue’s house in Takasaki that Raymond designed (photo). I enjoyed listening to Fusaichiro, the chairman of Inoue Industries, who was over 90 years of age yet still healthy at that time, the story of how he had Raymond build a house in Takasaki that was just like Raymond’s home in Nishi-Azabu. I was overwhelmed by that one-story house with low eaves which was completely transformed by the two design features of “holes” and “diagonals”. From this point on, “holes” and “diagonals” have continued to be a central theme in my architecture.

I had the intuition that “holes” and “diagonals” had a relationship with the location of the Czech Republic. Later, I discovered that Czech cubism and the designs by Jože Plečnik which have a deep relationship with the Czech Republic are a treasure trove of “holes” and “diagonals”.

Just what is behind this background in the Czech Republic? Naturally, there is most likely a deep relationship with Raymond’s dislike of Bohemianism, Germany and Bauhaus. When I drew auxiliary lines from the futuristic models of Kaplický and the Czech Republic, I saw something very different. These thoughts converged in my mind during an enjoyable fall night in Prague.