CUBE
09.04.99 - 25.05.99

Lord's Media Centre (1999)

Future Systems, led by Jan Kaplicky and Amanda Levete, was one of the UK's most innovative and influential architectural practices: known internationally, their name is synonymous with pioneering and technologically creative design. The work of Future Systems first made an impact through the powerful imagery of its unbuilt work, which reached an international high point with the second-placed scheme for the French National Library in 1989. Their built work of the 1990s attracted media acclaim and public interest, and the exhibition at CUBE in 1999 attracted unprecedented numbers for an architectural show. Over thirty of their projects were on show, including their then most recent built projects, the Hauer-King House, London; the Media Centre at Lords Cricket Ground, and a private house on the Pembrokeshire coast, Wales. Other works under development at the time included the Earth Centre, Doncaster, UK, and Comme des Garcons shops in New York, Paris and Tokyo.

 













 

An extract from the Architects Journal review by Kenneth Powell:

"Kaplicky (born Prague 1937 and sometime assistant to Rogers, Foster and, more surprisingly, Lasdun) insists that 'you don't need to build on a large scale to be an important architect - look at Charles Eames', but he is clearly thrilled by the process of building. Both he and Levete (they teamed up in 1989) are still heavily involved in every project, but there is now an office of six, with two associates, Angus Pond and David Miller. Kaplicky is adamant that 'everything we design is intended to be built', but the advent of Levete (ex-Richard Rogers) introduced, perhaps, a greater element of pragmatism - though not at the expense of experiment. There have been no compromises.

Kaplicky comments that 'we seem to be very much on our own - we don't really 'belong' anywhere', yet he concedes that the mood of British and European architecture has changed, towards a greater freedom and concern for the expressive and the 'organic', so that Future Systems increasingly does 'belong'. Not that organic modern architecture is anything new - Kaplicky sees Scharoun, the 'totally undervalued' Mendelsohn, late Wright, Corbusier's Ronchamp, and Niemeyer as part of his own tradition. Future Systems' work was once prone to interpretation in terms of technological determinism, but Kaplicky has no qualms about declaring that 'we are about the art of architecture. Why shouldn't a building be beautiful as well as practical?' (Twenty years ago, he admits, he wouldn't have used the word 'beauty'. ) Levete believes that if something is beautiful, it generally works well too. 'What could be more efficient than a flower?'

Coincidentally, Future Systems has just completed a modish flower shop in Notting Hill, but the issue of flowers is important. Natural forms provide the inspiration for everything that Future Systems does. There is no conflict, for Kaplicky and Levete, between nature and technology. Nature provides the model, technology the means to emulate it. Far from being irrational or wilful, Future Systems' architecture has a certain inevitability that comes from being at one with the natural world. 'Instinctive' is the adjective that Levete tends to use. High-Tech, she says, was never an adequate description - 'we let ourselves in for it, I guess, with all that techno-language!'

What still links Future Systems with the world of High-Tech (and sets it apart from Hadid, Libeskind and others) is its total rejection of rhetoric and theory. 'We tend to explain our work in practical and technical terms, ' says Levete. There was no great theory behind the design of the jumbo jet.

Future Systems operates from an inauspicious 1950s block in Paddington, even gloomier than its previous eyrie off Charlotte Street. Once inside the office door, however, you are in a different world and it's hard to feel, here as in the couple's Kensington house - a radical and colourful remodelling, in the mould of Rogers' Royal Avenue at a fraction of the cost - anything but exhilarated and cheered. For years, Future Systems seemed to be obstinately individual, heroic outsiders determined to go down in history as legendary non-builders (like Archigram).

But Future Systems' determination to 'tell it how it is' has paid off. There have been setbacks, like the apparent collapse of the brilliant, low-cost scheme for extending Lasdun's 1950s Hallfield School, but nobody these days dismisses Future Systems as impractical. They still like to excite and even shock - goading the heritage lobby with an organic tower on the site of Battersea Power Station, for instance - but they are pragmatic visionaries with a clear role in the future of world architecture."

Organised by Graeme Russell
Curated by the ICA