Lord's 'UFO' architect Jan Kaplicky dies

JAN KAPLICKY, one of the most original and inventive London architects, has died aged 71.

Kaplicky emigrated from his native Prague in 1968 and worked for both Norman Foster and Richard Rogers before setting up his own practice, Future Systems, in 1979. He was fascinated by the technology of cars, planes and of the US space programme, and wanted to apply it to buildings.

In partnership with his first wife Amanda Levete, he designed the Media Centre at Lord's Cricket Ground, a curvaceous white structure often compared to a UFO. It won the 1999 Stirling Prize. Future Systems' design for a new Selfridges in Birmingham also won plaudits.

Kaplicky had been battling to build his design for a national library in Prague, derided by critics as "an octopus". He died there from a suspected heart failure hours after the birth of his daughter by second wife Eliska Kaplicky Fuchsova.