Hadid and Jiřičná will sit on the jury at the National Library

PRAGUE - Among the architects that the National Library (NL) would like to see among the competitors for its new building project is the world-famous author of Czech origin, Jan Kaplický. The NL intends to announce an international open anonymous architectural competition in March. "We will not address anyone directly, as that would be a invited, not an open competition. However, we will inform eight architects by letter that the competition is taking place. Jan Kaplický will be among them," said Vlastimil Ježek, the director of the NL, today to ČTK.
According to him, the results of the competition could be known in March 2007. Subsequently, a public commercial competition for the general contractor of the building will be announced, and Ježek wants to start construction in 2008, with the building in Prague's Letná expected to be completed in 2010. Several tens of millions of crowns are planned for organizing the competition, including the first prize. The total cost of the new library is expected to be two billion.
"I would like it not just to be a library, but to be the most interesting Prague architecture at least for the last 20, if not 50 years," Ježek told ČTK. The international jury will be chaired by British architect of Iraqi origin Zaha Hadid, a significant figure in contemporary architecture and a Pritzker Prize winner, which is considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in architecture.
The seven-member jury includes French architect Dominique Perrault, the author of the new French National Library, and British architect of Czech origin Eva Jiřičná. Since the construction will take place on the border of a heritage zone, there will be a representative from UNESCO in the jury, as well as mayor Pavel Bém, the director of NL, and Czech architect Petr Bílek.
"No Comment," Kaplický responded to ČTK at the end of last year when asked if he would like to participate in the competition. He does not currently have a library among the buildings his studio has constructed; he was second in the competition for the new Paris library. "But it is a wonderful idea, I hope it comes to fruition; it could be world-class," he added. According to him, Prague needs several truly modern buildings.
If Kaplický were to participate in the competition, at least in the chair of the jury, he would have a supporter. Zaha Hadid does not hide that she is a great admirer of his work. The radical and progressive architectural style, characterized by typically rounded and organically appearing shapes, is known primarily to the British - the Future System studio he founded in 1978 is behind the well-known and award-winning media center at Lord's cricket ground in London, and his Selfridges department store in Birmingham is also famous.
How his design would be received in the Czech environment is impossible to estimate. Although Kaplický is currently the most well-known Czech architect abroad along with Jiřičná, he has not constructed anything in the Czech Republic. He competed for a memorial in Újezd but was eliminated in the first round. He also submitted a project for stairs to the park in Letná, but officials rejected it.