Léon Krier

Léon Krier
Léon Krier inPoundbury,Dorchester, UK, 2016
Born	(1946-04-07)7 April 1946 City of Luxembourg,Grand Duchy of Luxembourg
Occupation	Architect
Awards	Driehaus Architecture Prize2003 CNUAthena Medal 2006 Commander of the Royal Victorian Order

Léon KrierCVO(born 7 April 1946) is aLuxembourgisharchitect,architectural theorist,andurban planner,a prominent critic ofmodernist architectureand advocate ofNew Classical architectureandNew Urbanism.Krier combines an international architecture and planning practice with writing and teaching. He is well known for his master plan forPoundbury,in Dorset, England.He is the younger brother of architectRob Krier.

Biography

On 27 October 2017, in the Main Square of Poundbury, designed by Léon Krier, Prince Charles unveiled a statue in tribute to the late Queen Mother, the pedestal of which was designed also by Léon Krier.

Ciudad Cayalá, Guatemala City, Guatemala

The Krier House, Seaside, Florida, designed late 1980s

Village Hall,Windsor, Florida,1997, by Léon Krier

Città Nuova inAlessandria, Italy

Krier abandoned his architectural studies at theUniversity of Stuttgart,Germany, in 1968, after only one year, to work in the office of architectJames Stirlingin London, UK. After four years working for Stirling, interrupted by a two-year association withJosef Paul Kleihuesin Berlin, Krier spent 20 years in England practicing and teaching at theArchitectural AssociationandRoyal College of Art.In this period, Krier's statement: “I am an architect, because I don’t build”,became a famous expression of his uncompromising anti-modernist attitude. Since the late 1970s he has been one of the most influential modern traditional architects and planners. He is one of the first and most prominent critics of architectural modernism, mainly of its functional zoning and the ensuing suburbanism, campaigning for the renaissance of the traditional grown city model and its growth based on the polycentric city model.

His ideas had a great influence on theNew Urbanismmovement, both in the US and Europe. The most complete compilation of them is published in his bookThe Architecture of Community.

He is best known for his masterplan for, and ongoing oversight of, the development ofPoundbury,an urban extension toDorchester,UK for theDuchy of CornwallandCharles III;and for his masterplan for Paseo Cayalá, an extension of four new urban quarters forGuatemala City.From 1976 to 2016 Krier was a visiting professor at the Universities ofPrinceton,Yale,Virginia,CornellandNotre Dame.From 1987 to 1990 Krier was the first director of the SOMAI, theSkidmore, Owings & MerrillArchitectural Institute, in Chicago. Since 1990, Krier has been industrial designer for Valli e Valli - Assa Abloyand Giorgetti,an Italian furniture company.In 2003 Krier became the inauguralDriehaus Architecture Prizelaureate.

Krier acts as architectural consultant on his urban planning projects but only designs buildings of his personal choice. Amongst his best known realizations are the temporary façade at the 1980Venice Biennale;the Krier house in the resort village ofSeaside, Florida,USA (where he also advised on the masterplan); theArchaeological Museum of São Miguel de Odrinhas,Portugal; theWindsorVillage Hall in Florida; the Jorge M. Perez Architecture Center,the University of Miami School of Architecture in Miami,Florida; and the new Neighbourhood Center Città Nuova inAlessandria, Italy.

Though Krier is well known for his defense of classical architecture and the reconstruction of traditional “European city” models, close scrutiny of his workin fact shows a shift from an early Modernist rationalist approach (project for University ofBielefeld,1968) towards avernacularandclassicalapproach both formally and technologically. The project that marked a major turning point in his campaigning attitude towards the reconstruction of the traditional European city was his scheme (unrealized) for the 'reconstruction' of his home city ofLuxembourg(1978), in response to the modernistredevelopment of the city.He later master planned Luxembourg's newCité Judiciairethat was to be architecturally designed by his brother (1990–2008).

In 1990, of the nine experts invited, he was the only one to support the Dresden citizens' initiative to reconstruct the historicDresden Frauenkircheand theHistorische Neumarkt areaand, in 2007, the FrankfurtAltstadtForum,a citizen initiative which succeeded in reconstructing the historic "Hühnermarkt" area against strong professional and political opposition.

Krier has applied his theories in large-scale, detailed plans for numerous cities in the Western world. These include the unrealized schemes forKingston upon Hull(1977),Rome(1977),Luxembourg(1978) (which was his most comprehensive masterplan focusing on sprawl mitigation and town center repair),West Berlin(1977–83),Bremen(1978–1980),Stockholm(1981), Poing Nord,Munich(1983), a masterplan to be completed in the year 2000 for Washington D.C. (1984) commissioned by theMuseum of Modern Artof New York; Atlantis, a neoclassical district for intellectuals and artists onTenerife(1987);Area Fiat, Novoli (Florence), Italy (1993),Corbeanca,Romania(2007), and the High Malton Masterplan for the Fitzwilliam Estate, Yorkshire, England (2014).

Krier has designed plans commissioned by public administrations, including the redevelopment of Tor Bella Monaca, a degraded suburb of Rome (2010), and a long-term redevelopment policy plan for the municipal area ofCattolica, Rimini, Italy(2017);he was able to apply similar principles to build developments such as Knokke, Heulebrug, Belgium (1998), completed without his direction; and in his masterplan for Newquay growth area (2002–2006), Cornwall, UK, continued after his resignation by Adam Associates.

As of September 2022,Krier is designing plans forPoundburyDorset, U.K. (1988–present);Paseo CayaláArchived8 July 2018 at theWayback Machine,Guatemala City(2003–present); El Socorro and Nogales, two new urban quarters forGuatemala City(2018–present); and the redevelopment of the closedFawley Waterside Power Station,Southampton, U.K. (2017–present), which gained outline planning permission in July 2020, with construction beginning in 2022 and the first homes expected to be available by 2024; as well as the masterplan for a new town,Herencia de Allende,nearSan Miguel de Allende,México (2018–present).

The size of the city

Krier agreed with the viewpoint of the lateHeinrich Tessenowthat there is a strict relationship between the economic and cultural wealth of a city, on the one hand, and the limitation of its population on the other. But this is not a matter of mere hypothesis, he argues, but historical fact. The measurements and geometric organization of a city and of its quarters are not the result of mere chance or accident or simply of economic necessity, but rather represents a civilizing order which is not only aesthetic and technical but also legislative and ethical.

Krier claims, that “the whole of Paris is a pre-industrial city which still works, because it is so adaptable, something the creations of the 20th century will never be. A city likeMilton Keynescannot survive an economic crisis, or any other kind of crisis, because it is planned as a mathematically determined social and economic project. If that model collapses, the city will collapse with it.” Thus Krier argues not merely against the contemporary modernist city (he in fact argues that places like Los Angeles, US, are not cities), but against a gigantism tendency in urban growth, evident in the exploding scale of urban networks and buildings in European cities throughout the 19th century which was a result of the concentration of economic, political and cultural power.In response to this, Krier proposed the reconstruction of the European city, based on polycentric settlement models which are dictated not by machine scale but by human scale both horizontally and vertically, of self-sufficient mixed use quarters not exceeding 33 hectares (82 acres) (able to be crossed in 10 minutes walk) of building heights of 3 to 5 floors or 100 steps (able to be walked up comfortably) and which are limited not by mere administrative borders but by walkable, ridable, drivable boulevards, tracks, park ways. Cities then grow by the multiplication of independent urban quarters, not by horizontal or vertical over-extensions of established urban cores.

On the development of the city

Krier has written a number of essays − many first published in the journalArchitectural Design,against modernist town planning and its principle of dividing up the city into a system of single use zones (housing, shopping, industry, leisure, etc.), as well as the resultant suburbia, commuting, etc. Indeed, Krier sees the modernist planner as a tyrannical figure that imposes detrimental megastructural scale more dictated by ideology than necessity.

Krier summons up his criticisms and pinpoints concepts in the form of series of drawings and didactic annotated diagrams, often in his own handwriting, eventually collected in his bookDrawings for Architecture,like the concept of Urban in his 1983 diagram of a truly urban town= RES PUBLICA+RES PRIVATA. There he conceives the basic urban fabric, made of private buildings and uses, as an object of vernacular local design and the exceptional public and institutional buildings as objects of classical architecture and located in privileged sites, on squares and in the focus of major vistas.

On architecture and the city

The principle behind Krier's writings has been to explain the rational foundations of architecture and the city, stating that “In the language of symbols, there can exist no misunderstanding”. That is to say, for Krier, buildings have a rational order and type: a house, a palace, a temple, a campanile, a church; but also a roof, a column, a window, etc., what he terms “nameable objects”. As projects get bigger, he goes on to argue, the buildings should not get bigger, but divide up; thus, for instance, in his unrealized scheme for a school inSaint-Quentin-en-Yvelines(1978), France, the school became a “city in miniature”.

Krier proposes functional programs greatly varied within each block and plot. For him the building's design should always be typologically or tectonically justified and the variety of building types and volumes should reflect this functional variety in an evident and natural way; in short all gratuitous uniformity or gratuitous variety should be avoided designing neighboring building lots of dimensional, functional and thus formal variety and in such a way as to generate networks of public spaces consisting of public streets, squares, avenues, boulevards, parks. For Krier it is essential to compose at once the harmony of the urban blocks and of the inseparable public spaces generated between them.

In searching for such a typological architecture, Krier's work has been termed “an architecture without a style”. However, it has also been pointed out that the appearance of his architecture is very much likeRoman architecture,which he then places in all his projects, be it central London, Stockholm, Tenerife or Florida.” He has defended the architecture ofHitler cabinetministerAlbert Speer,distinguishing his work from the regime he served.

A selection of manifesto texts by Krier

Many of these are available online

• The idea of reconstruction
• Critique of zoning
• Town and country
• Critique of the megastructural city
• Critique of industrialization
• Urban components
• The city within the city – Les Quartiers
• The size of a city
• Critique of Modernisms
• Organic versus mechanical composition
• Names and nicknames
• Building and architecture
• The reconstruction of the European city
• What is an urban quartier? Form and legislation

Selected publications

• James Stirling: buildings & projects 1950-1974,Stuttgart, Gerd Hatje, 1975
• Rational Architecture Rationelle,Bruxelles, AAM Editions, 1978.
• Léon Krier. Houses, Palaces, Cities.Edited by Demetri Porphyrios,Architectural Design,54 7/8, 1984.
• Léon Krier Drawings 1967-1980,Bruxelles, AAM Editions, 1981.
• Albert Speer,Architecture 1932-1942,Bruxelles, AAM Editions, 1985. New York, Monacelli Press, 2013.
• Léon Krier: Architecture & Urban Design 1967-1992,London, Academy Editions, 1992.
• Architecture: Choice or Fate,London, Andreas Papadakis Publishers, 1998.
• Get Your House Right, Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid,New York, Sterling Publishing, 2007
• The Architectural Tuning of Settlements,London, The Prince's Foundation, 2008
• Drawing for Architecture,Cambridge (Massachusetts), MIT Press, 2009.
• The Architecture of Community,Washington DC, Island Press, 2009.
• Léon Krier: selected publications available onlineLeon Krier -- Selected Publications.

External links

• 2001 interview on New Urbanism
• Introductory VideoonYouTubeon theDriehaus Prize,feat. Léon Krier
• Article 'Cities for Living'Archived4 March 2016 at theWayback Machineby Roger Scruton at city-journal.org