Jiřičná was born in Zlín twelve days before the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, studied architecture in Prague, and went to London in 1968 on a temporary placement with the Greater London Council. The Warsaw Pact invasion that August cancelled her travel permit and she stayed, spending eight years on Brighton Marina before opening her own practice around 1980. The work that made her name was small and exacting — shops for Joseph, interiors, and above all staircases in glass and stainless steel, detailed to the bolt. She returned to Czech practice after 1989, heading the architecture department at Prague's applied arts academy from 1996 and co-founding AI Design there in 1999, through which most of her later Czech buildings, including the Zlín congress and university centre, were delivered.
