Provincial Prague

The sudden death of British-Czech star architect Jan Kaplický has also given the final blow to his futuristic plans for a new Czech national library. The German-language Prager Zeitung comments: "Modern architecture, particularly buildings as distinctive as Kaplickýs, will always polarise opinion. But whereas elsewhere such controversial buildings are constructed despite populist hostilities, in Prague such daring projects generate an organisational and legal chaos and narrow-minded political wrangling that develop a remarkable destructive power of their own. ... Prague, and above all its representatives sitting in town halls and government offices, were and are not mature enough for such a project. ... The cosmopolitan emigrant Kaplicky and his extravagant project were simply light years ahead of the provincial and corruption-prone structures here."

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