Jan Kaplicky Drawings collects the visionary architect's sketches, cutaway drawings, and photomontages into a single volume — tracing his extraordinary graphic imagination from the early years of Future Systems through to his final ink drawings of the mid-1990s.
About This Book
Jan Kaplicky (1937–2009) treated drawing not as a representational tool but as a mode of thought — a way of discovering form before construction could begin. This book gathers a career-spanning selection of his architectural drawings, from speculative design studies for the International Space Station undertaken with NASA to the organic, pod-like Media Centre at Lord's Cricket Ground in London. What emerges is a portrait of an architect whose draughtsmanship was inseparable from his futurist vision. For students and practitioners alike, the work is a sustained argument for the architectural drawing as an independent intellectual act.
Key Features
- 212 pages of sketches, cutaway drawings, and photomontages spanning multiple decades of practice
- Text by Richard Rogers and Ivan Margolius
- Featured projects include design studies for the International Space Station (with NASA) and the Stirling Prize-winning Media Centre at Lord's Cricket Ground, London
- Published by CIRCA Press, 2009
What You'll Discover
- How Kaplicky used drawing as a primary act of architectural invention rather than a documentation tool
- The evolution of Future Systems' visual language from the 1970s through the 1990s, charted through original works on paper
- The relationship between Kaplicky's speculative, technology-driven imagination and the built outcomes it eventually produced
- The range of drawing techniques — sketch, cutaway, photomontage — through which one architect constructed an entirely singular design sensibility
About the Author
This volume features contributions from Richard Rogers and Ivan Margolius. No further biographical detail is available in the source description.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 212
- Dimensions: 30.91 x 2.31 x 31.04 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 0993072100
- Publisher: CIRCA Press
- Publication Date: 2009
Perfect For: Architects and designers with an interest in architectural drawing, fans of Future Systems and British high-tech architecture, and anyone tracing the line between speculative vision and built form.