Amanda Levete, former wife and partner of the late Jan Kaplicky of blessed memory, has spoken at last.

It will be recalled that Ms. Levete’s tenure as Mrs. Kaplicky did not end with her illustrious Czech-born architect husband’s death in January, but terminated some time prior thereto: the couple divorced in 2006, splitting their lucrative Future Systems practice between them. Only last month we caught wind of Levete’s plan to effectively liquidate that portion of her husband’s practice that devolved upon her after his passing—with this additional intriguing nugget, that rights to the Future Systems brand belonged not to Levete but to Kaplicky’s widow, a certain Eliska Kaplicky Fuchsova.

Levete opens up to the Telegraph about how difficult Jan could be (natch), about how hard it was to partition the office after the divorce (sure—Specht Harpman made the enlightened decision not to bother), and about meeting Eliska and her two children for the first time at Jan’s funeral. She expresses a magnanimity towards her successor which would be suspicious but for the fact that Levete has no interest in reclaiming the Future Systems name, since, as she’s careful to point out, her own self-titled firm scored a big project in Bangkok the very day of Kaplicky’s death.

In brief, Levete is every inch the affecting, bereaved ex-partner, with just the right quantity of conflicted resentment as befits a long suffering ex-wife. There’s only one moment where she appears to be doing her grieving behind clenched fangs.

She doesn’t agree that opposition to the [Czech] national library project [which encountered fierce political opposition] contributed to [Jan’s] death. “He could come across as disappointed, but Jan thrived on controversy. He provoked it. The library should be his greatest unbuilt work.”

Since Kaplicky’s death, there’s been a growing movement to have the library built, in part as a tribute to its designer. But when Levete let go of what was left of Kaplicky’s staff, she signaled her lack of interest in the project, and effectively put a stake through the library’s heart. Obviously she’s got bigger fish on the fryer—Bangkok, for example. (Good luck with all that.)

‘My Greatest Regret Is that I Didn’t Make Peace with Him in Life’ [Telegraph]