PASSINGS / Jan Kaplicky

Jan Kaplicky, 71, an award-winning Czech architect based in Britain, died Wednesday after collapsing in a Prague street, just hours after his second wife gave birth to their daughter.

Rescue workers attempted to resuscitate Kaplicky for 30 minutes. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Born in Prague on April 18, 1937, Kaplicky studied at the College of Applied Arts & Architecture in the Czech capital before leaving his homeland for London in 1968 after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia crushed the liberal reforms of Alexander Dubcek.

Kaplicky’s design of a new media center at the Lord’s cricket ground in London was honored with Britain’s most prestigious architecture award, the Stirling Prize, in 1999.

He and his design consultancy, Future Systems, also designed the futuristic Selfridges building in Birmingham, England; the Stonehenge tourist center; and a floating bridge linking West India Quay and Canary Wharf in London.

In 2007, Future Systems won an international design competition for the new building of the Czech National Library in Prague, which would have been Kaplicky’s first building in his homeland.

But the project attracted controversy. The design is for a pyramidal building that looks like an artificial hill with a huge eye-like window near the top, overseeing the capital’s landmarks. A number of top Czech leaders opposed it, and it is not clear if the project will materialize.