Eva Jiricna / Eva Jiricna Architects, Ltd.

London

Eva Jiricna Architects have an international portfolio of residential, commercial, and retail interiors; furniture, products, and exhibitions; and private and public buildings. The practice is at the forefront of innovation in form and technology, with highly crafted and detailed designs employing classic materials in a thoroughly modern language.

Despite her claim that she doesn’t sketch in order to “make a beautiful drawing,” this painfully honest illustration of how her practice operates is an exception to that rule.

CZECH-BORN FOUNDER Eva Jiricna has been based in London for over thirty years, having settled there shortly before Czechoslovakia’s government was overthrown by eastern bloc forces in 1968. Through early commissions for the fashion industry, designing interiors for Esprit and Vidal Sassoon, she quickly became known for her attention to detail.

“I am constantly trying to resolve problems and details,” she says. “I need to know what a detail looks like—how the materials come together, how it works in three dimensions. If I draw it for myself, I understand it. If I try to imagine it, it is too whimsical.”

Her functional approach and passion for detail come fully into play in her elegant staircases, which have become a Jiricna signature. As Petr Kratochvil notes in his essay “The Poetic Minimalism of Eva Jiricna,” “A staircase is not just an excuse to create an artifact; it is a means of organizing interior space, of defining its internal organization.” He goes on to suggest that Jiricna’s design process could be expressed as “design = the logical solution of problems.”⁶

“That’s the hardest part of the project—to ask questions about everything important to the design and its function. Once a person can find the question, he will also find the answer,” Jiricna says.

Jiricna finds her questions and answers through sketching. “I sketch all the time; I am surrounded by endless amounts of A3 and A4 size pads,” she says. “Sketching is a tool—an extension of one’s brain.” Not surprisingly, this analytical approach rarely results in a beautiful sketch. “I don’t sketch to make a beautiful drawing,” she says, “but to resolve ideas.” Nor does she feel the attraction of designer notebooks, claiming, “I don’t carry a sketchbook with me. I find paper everywhere—the back of letters, anything.”⁷

Canada Water
Bus Terminal

Jubilee Line Extension/ London Transport

“This was one element in the enormous Jubilee Line extension project, in conjunction with a series of bus stations to connect the urban areas to the Underground. Canada Water is situated close to a high-rise housing development, and it was necessary to satisfy the requirements of the residential environment by providing the bus station with a roof that was relatively attractive to look down upon as well as one that gave protection from bus traffic pollution and created an acoustic barrier. There was an inherent problem in that there were only five points of support, since the bus station was to be erected over a tube station while it was still under construction. The two large wings forming the roof are carried by a central space-frame, acting as a main construction beam from which the wings are cantilevered.

The underside of the roof is provided with acoustic panels to absorb noise; simultaneously they act as light reflectors at night when the uplighters come into use as the main source of illumination, helping to keep the internal space cheerful and airy.”

—Eva Jiricna

Photography by Richard Bryant arcaid.co.uk

The Orangery
Greenhouse

Prague Castle Management

“Limited access to the site of this historic fifteenth-century greenhouse [Prague Castle Orangery, Prague], plus the difficulties of providing an adequate foundation, led to the design of a diagonal mesh stretching between the cross-frames. The glass is suspended from the new structure in large laminated panels, and watering of the plants is accomplished by a computer-controlled system and automatically operated sunshades.”

—Eva Jiricna

Photography by Richard Bryant arcaid.co.uk