Prof. Jiří Pelcl (born1950), is one of our leading designers. He studied architecture at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and furniture design at the Royal College of Art in London. He first caught the public eye with the establishment of the art group ATIKA in 1987, which became known for its extravagant furniture designs. Three years later he established his own studio ATELIER PELCL.
Jiří Pelcl is engaged in industrial design. He designs furniture and interiors, glass and porcelain for a number of companies. In addition to producing his own designs he also teaches at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, where since 1997 he has headed the studio of architecture and design and during the years 2002 - 2005 he was chancellor. As well as teaching he is also an expert on the theory of design and regularly publishes in professional magazines and books and is a guest speaker at many universities at home and aboard (Rietveld Academy Amsterdam, University of California Berkeley, RCA London, Yale University, ENSDI Paris, SCIARCH Los Angeles). He has designed the interiors of a number of prestigious buildings, for example interiors for President Václav Havel at Prague Castle, the embassies in Rome and Pretoria and the Czech House in Malmö. He exhibits at home and aboard. To date he has had 20 solo exhibitions and participated in over 110 joint exhibitions. His work is present in the collections of the National Gallery in Prague, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, the Moravian Gallery in Brno, the Die Neue Sammlung in Munich and the Museum fűr Angewandte Kunst in Zurich.
For his contribution to international design and education he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2006 from the University of Brighton in Great Britain. In the same year he was awarded the National Design Award and the award Form 2006 in Germany.
For the TECHO Design Collection he designed the coat stand ALVA, which is part of the retrospective publication of his work SUBJECTIVE x OBJECTIVE. It was launched at the exhibition of the same name at the Looshaus gallery in Vienna in the spring of 2007.