Given the tempting sceneries projected by Future Systems it can be expected
to meet here an optimistic, innovative and exploratory design practice.
Future Systems is a London-based office headed by two partners, Jan Kaplicky
(Prague 1937) and Amanda Levete (Bridgend 1955), which work challenges
the traditional preconceptions of space and technology.
 Proposal for an office building with integrated (wind) powerstation |
 A 150 storey skyscraper, showing the scale necessary to house tomorrows' population. |
Base for this architecture which 'embraces the precision of the armaments industry; the lightness, structural rigidity and strength-through-shape of aircraft constructions' is Kaplicky's vision of a technological architecture. Kaplicky grew up in Czechoslovakia surrounded by the legendary Czech Functionalism of the twenties and thirties; a revolutionary architecture embedded in the radicalism of the 20th century Czechoslovak industrial history. Besides this, Kaplicky got influenced by the images of American culture and design that reached him through copies of Life magazine and two brief but significant visits to the USA in the mid-sixties. These influences inspired him to work on a future architecture with an impressive imaginative power. The Soviet invasion into Czechoslovakia (20th of August 1968) brought Kaplicky to London, where he later on established Future Systems.
A concern for environmental issues is an important force in much of the work. Future Systems has been involved in two extensive research programmes on environmental issues, one collaboration with Ove Arup & Partners and the second a joint project with the Martin Centre at Cambridge University.
The designs and prototypes of Future Systems (a.o. research proposals for NASA and many designs for a high-tech wilderness retreat) have often reached beyond the courage of their possible clients, but recently some large and complex, imaginative designs, are definitively to be constructed. One of these projects is The Ark, an enormous lightweight enclosure for the Earth Centre, to be completed at the end of the year 2001.
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