National libraries are always hard work. Poor Colin St John Wilson, who died last year, spent almost his entire career on designing and redesigning the British Library; in Paris, Dominique Perrault was lambasted for creating a library in which there was so much light in its four towers they couldn’t be used for books. The latest furore is happening in Prague, where the anonymous competition for its library was won with an extraordinary organic design by Future Systems, a British practice led by the Czech émigré Jan Kaplicky.

The proposal – a blobby, champagne-coloured mound spotted with round openings that reveal a purple interior – has been likened to a jellyfish and a mountain of slime. Although not universally popular, it is a hit with the public and librarians. The problem has been the politicians. Kaplicky has threatened to resign unless the government quits stalling. “It is a battle of one little architect against the whole machinery of the state,” Kaplicky tells me in his west London studio. “I’m fighting for modern architecture in Europe, for culture and for the book.”