REPORTER 029
PROFILE Eva Jiřičná
Truly embodying the adage that age is only a number, FX Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award winner Eva Jiřičná talks about her modest beginnings, her humble outlook on life and what the future holds
WORDS BY EMILY MARTIN
LAST NOVEMBER, architect Eva Jiřičná was awarded Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award winner at the last FX Awards gala night in London. She has enjoyed a career in architecture spanning six decades, and is known for her distinctly innovative and modern style – notably pioneering glass for structural use. Her interior design schemes are internationally recognised, which encompass engineered masterpieces that underpin her architectural skills. Jiřičná is head of department of achitecture at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and has won seemingly countless international awards for services to architecture and design. She is a worthy recipient of all her awards and accolades, but her story to success is unique: her upbringing was blighted by war, prejudice, poverty and displacement. Yet, despite it all, Jiřičná says it is important to remember the people who are worse off. I spoke to her about winning the award, what it means to her and her path to becoming an architect. ‘It is very dificult to answer because…
with age you just get now various [lifetime achievement] awards and people notice that you have actually done something or you pursue some ideas throughout your life,’ she explains. ‘And so it is extremely pleasant when you have the acknowledgement. But on the other hand, I’m not a person who would think, “oh wow, now I’ve got the prize, so I’m a brilliant person”. I still see what I do wrong [and] it doesn’t stop me just trying to go deeper and deeper into every single problem I’m dealing with.’ Jiřičná’s modesty underline’s her brilliance.
Left Eva Jiřičná
When you speak to her you quickly realise her kind, grounded, yet resilient and ambitious personality and her passion for architecture, which she describes as a challenge that pushes
you further; ‘the encouragement to continue and carry on doing whatever you started a long time ago.’ Born in the former Czechoslovakia Jiřičná attended the University of Prague and the Prague Academy of Fine Arts. She originally wanted to study chemistry, but an argument with a lecturer pushed her to architecture, which she describes as a kind of happy accident. Nevertheless, her interests were in all-male environments, who would discourage her whenever possible. But she was never deterred. ‘“Why don’t you do interiors? Why don’t
you do, you know, something which is simple?”, meaning cushions,’ explains Jiřičná. ‘It really was hurtful because...I loved maths, I loved physics and I loved chemistry. So I couldn’t absolutely understand why I should be deprived of studying something which might have been my life venue. Immediately, as soon as I entered the architecture faculty, I did three years of structural engineering parallel to architecture.’ Born in 1939, at the beginning of the Second
World War, the German army had occupied the town that she was born in and Jiřičná’s mother would remember the army was marching outside the windows of the hospital. ‘No, maybe I don’t want to exaggerate, but I had quite hard beginnings’ she says. She describes a ‘relatively normal’ life, which she credits her parents’ good spirits and humour, despite what was going on around: ‘I had to be terribly careful that I didn’t hit the daughter of the SS oficer who lived across the road when she was stealing the toys!’, Jiřičná laughs. When the family moved to Prague, the flat
they lived in was left unfurnished for years. The train in which the furniture was brought in was ambushed with everything taken. ‘There was no coal, there was no electricity; I mean a few months before the end of the war, it was the
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