030 REPORTER
‘The glass staircase is a story of getting right into the dark places,’ Jiřičná recounts on the origins of what has since become her trademark legacy. ‘Because retail brands started hiring basements [units] because it was cheaper and people didn’t want to go down because it had lack of daylight. So I thought, “okay, so why don’t we use glass?” But glass was at the embryonic stage. It broke when you stepped on it or possibly could break even if you could calculate glass as a structural material. So I started working with structural engineers. ‘And then because it is aesthetically...
pleasing, we have somehow fulfilled this kind of process of opening up the possibilities of glass being used not only in interior but elsewhere.’ Initially she started putting Perspex underneath the glass, but engineered it so glass was the
Left and top The Hotel Josef is a sleek and modern design, showcasing a lighter alternative to the heavier atmospheres of the city’s older historic hotels
Right Inside Lloyds’s HQ, London, in 1987 with interior design by EJAL
Below The staircase inside the Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Jiřičná’s hometown
most primitive. I slept on a tablecloth in a flat, but everybody was in that situation. And I had these wonderful parents who somehow went through it. My father was always joking [and] I didn’t really think that anything terrible was happening’ she says. The family home was ‘made comfortable’ by
1951, and life for Jiřičná into her early 20s when she was reading architecture was modest. She remembers waiting until the family dinner was finished until she could work. ‘Then I could put
my drawing board on the dining table, but I was used to it and I wasn’t the only one [going through this]. I think I just had a tremendous gift that I didn’t take myself seriously’, she explains. ‘I never considered myself to be a victim, never. I always looked at those who were much worse than me, that is what my mum really somehow managed to do. That whatever happened, she always said “don’t look up, but look down”. And that is what I do still. So I do realise how lucky I am [and always have been].’ Arriving in London in 1968 Jiřičná worked
as an architect with the Greater London Council on social housing projects. She progressed quickly to the Louis de Soissons Partnership to work on Brighton Marina, before joining Richard Rogers RA to work on the interiors of the Lloyd’s of London headquarters. While she gained recognition with architectural projects, her retail design commissions, most notably Joseph, were greatly influential. In 1976, she became a British citizen and in the early 1980s she had set up her own practice working on projects for the Royal Academy of Arts and the Jubilee Line extension at Canada Water, amongst others.
structural material. Clients loved it and demand grew. Following the 1989 Velvet Revolution, Jiřičná began working on projects back home in (what soon became) the Czech Republic. She designed the new Congress Centre, as well as a new faculty building of the Tomas Bata University in her birthtown of Zlín. She has designed many new projects in Prague, including the Main Hall of Komerční Banka and the reconstruction of the St Anna Church in the Old Town. In addition to her London practice – Eva Jiřičná Architects – she set up Architecture Interior Design (AI Design) in 1999 with Petr Vágner, which is working on a number of projects including regeneration of a Prague Skyscraper. However, by 2020, she had closed her London ofice.
‘I closed the practice in London because I
was 80 and I did not have anybody to leave the practice to,’ Jiřičná says. ‘I saw that was the time to let all those people, who had a future ahead of them, go because I could not justify [holding on to them]. I could have died a day after. At that age you simply cannot plan the future.’ We talk more about the projects in the Czech
Rebublic, which include former communist buildings, the university in Zlín, an old music hall, judging a competition for an urban scheme in Bratislava and a talk in Croatia. Life travelling between Prague and London, where Jiřičná resides, and the rest of the world is still busy. When we spoke, Jiřičná was awaiting a hip operation, which has temporarily grounded her, so she relies on Zoom until she can comfortably travel by plane. And, while she may not be planning too far into the future anymore, she simply says: ‘I just try to keep going!’
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