About this talk

Running time: 27 minutes

Eva Jiricna was born in Czechoslovakia and studied architecture in Prague, first at the University from 1956 - 1962, then at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1963 - 1967, while teaching at the University and then at the Institute of Industrial Design. In 1968 she came to London where she qualified to practise in Britain. She spent one year in the GLC schools division, then joined the Louis de Soissons Partnership to work for eleven years on Brighton Marina, designing "viaducts, land reclamation, breakwaters, housing schemes, locks, and whatever is related to large marinas".

There followed a couple of years in partnership with David Hodges and three years as team-leader with Richard Rogers (see People Places) designing interiors for the Lloyds Insurance building in London (see Genesis Of The New Lloyd's Underwriting Room by Richard Rogers), before she set up her present partnership Jiricna Kerr Associates in 1985.

Though a highly-trained and experienced architect, it is as an interior designer that she has acquired international fame, particularly for the beautiful shops, restaurants and flats she has done in London for Joseph Ettedgui. Yet, as she says in her talk, this has been a completely unexpected development in her career.

The most modest of people and totally committed to architecture, she does not pretend any high-flown philosophical approach to her work, maintaining that it is from her function as architect interpreting the client's brief that her designs evolve.

This is the first of Jiricna's talks for Pidgeon Digital. Her second, where she discusses staircases she has designed for Somerset House and the New-York Historical Socitey, can be found here: Two Staircases, Two Materials: Somerset House & The New-York Historical Society.

Please note that a transcript of this talk is available - please contact us for further details.