Léon Krier is an architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

, architectural theorist

Architectural theory

Architectural theory is the act of thinking, discussing, or most importantly writing about architecture. Architectural theory is taught in most architecture schools and is practiced by the world's leading architects. Some forms that architecture theory takes are the lecture or dialogue, the...

 and urban planner

Urban planner

An urban planner or city planner is a professional who works in the field of urban planning/land use planning for the purpose of optimizing the effectiveness of a community's land use and infrastructure. They formulate plans for the development and management of urban and suburban areas, typically...

. From the late 1970s onwards (but especially during the 1980s) Krier has been one of the most influential neo-traditional architects and planners. He is best known for his development of Poundbury

Poundbury

Poundbury is an experimental new town or urban extension on the outskirts of Dorchester in the county of Dorset, England.The development is built on land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. It is built according to the principles of Prince Charles...

, an urban extension to Dorchester, UK for the Duchy of Cornwall

Duchy of Cornwall

The Duchy of Cornwall is one of two royal duchies in England, the other being the Duchy of Lancaster. The eldest son of the reigning British monarch inherits the duchy and title of Duke of Cornwall at the time of his birth, or of his parent's succession to the throne. If the monarch has no son, the...

 under the guidance of Prince of Wales

Charles

Charles is a given name for males and is borrowed from the French form of the Latin Carolus Charles is a given name for males and is borrowed from the French form of the Latin Carolus...

. In campaigning for the reconstruction of the traditional European city model, he has had a great influence on the New Urbanism

New urbanism

New Urbanism is an urban design movement, which promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually continued to reform many aspects of real estate development, urban planning, and municipal land-use...

 movement, both in the USA and Europe.

To date, apart from a temporary façade at the 1980 Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

, some minor alterations to private homes, and a bridge pavilion (picture) the only buildings designed by Krier to actually be built are a house in the resort village of Seaside, Florida

Seaside, Florida

Seaside is an unincorporated master-planned community on the Florida panhandle in Walton County, between Panama City Beach and Destin. The town has become the topic of slide lectures in architectural schools and in housing-industry magazines, and is visited by design professionals from all over the...

, USA (where he also advised on the masterplan); the Jorge M. Perez Architecture Center on the campus of the University of Miami

University of Miami

The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...

 in Miami, Florida

Miami, Florida

Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...

; and the new Neighbourhood Center Città Nuova in Alessandria

Alessandria

-Monuments:* The Citadel * The church of Santa Maria di Castello * The church of Santa Maria del Carmine * Palazzo Ghilini * Università del Piemonte Orientale-Museums:* The Marengo Battle Museum...

, Italy. Indeed, in keeping with his uncompromising anti-modernist attitude, Krier has stated: “I am an architect, because I don’t build.”

Léon Krier was married to artist Rita Wolff (who sometimes made paintings based on her husband's urban visions), and now lives in Provence

Provence

Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...

.

Léon Krier is the younger brother of architect Rob Krier.

Career

Krier began to study architecture at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, in the mid-1960s, but then gave it up in 1969 to go and work in the office of architect James Stirling

James Stirling (architect)

Sir James Frazer Stirling FRIBA was a British architect. He is considered to be among the most important and influential British architects of the second half of the 20th century...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, UK. Krier then spent 20 years in England, working for Stirling for three years, and later teaching at the Architectural Association and Royal College of Art

Royal College of Art

The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...

. In 1987-90 Krier was the first director of the SOMAI, the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Architectural Institute, in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

.

Though Krier is well-known for his defence of classical architecture and the reconstruction of traditional “European city” models, close scrutiny of his work in fact shows a shift from an early Modernist rationalist approach (project for University of Bielefeld

Bielefeld

Bielefeld is an independent city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 323,000, it is also the most populous city in the Regierungsbezirk Detmold...

, 1968) to an increasingly more Postmodernist and ultimately more classical

Classical architecture

Classical architecture is a mode of architecture employing vocabulary derived in part from the Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, enriched by classicizing architectural practice in Europe since the Renaissance...

 approach. The project that marked a major turning point in his campaigning attitude towards the reconstruction of the traditional European city was his scheme (unrealised) for the 'reconstruction' of his home city of Luxembourg (1978), in response to continued modernization of the city.

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 typology: 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 unrealised scheme for a school in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines

Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines

Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines is a new town in the French département of Yvelines. It is one of the original five villes nouvelles of Paris and was named after the Saint Quentin Pond, which was chosen to become the town's centre. The town was built from a greenfield site starting in the 1960s. In...

 (1978), France, the school became a “city in miniature”. 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 like Roman architecture

Roman architecture

Ancient Roman architecture adopted certain aspects of Ancient Greek architecture, creating a new architectural style. The Romans were indebted to their Etruscan neighbors and forefathers who supplied them with a wealth of knowledge essential for future architectural solutions, such as hydraulics...

, which he then places in all his projects, be it central London, Stockholm, Tenerife or Florida.”

On the development of the city

Krier has written a number of short texts − many first published in the journal Architectural Design

Architectural Design

Architectural Design, also known as AD, is a UK-based architectural journal first launched in 1930.In its early days it was more concerned with the British scene, but gradually became more international. It also moved away from presenting mostly news towards theme-based issues...

during the 1980s, often in his own hand-writing in the form of series of didactic annotated diagrams − against modernist town planning and its concern for dividing up the city into a system of zones (housing, shopping, industry, leisure, etc.), as well as the resultant suburbia, commuting, etc. Indeed, Krier sees the modern planner as a tyrannical figure.

A selection of manifesto texts by Léon Krier

• The idea of reconstruction
• Critique of zoning
• Town and country
• Critique of the megastructural city
• Critique of industrialisation
• 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

The size of the city

Krier agreed with the viewpoint of architect Heinrich Tessenow

Heinrich Tessenow

Heinrich Tessenow was a German architect, professor, and urban planner active in the Weimar era.-Biography:...

 that there was 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 was not a matter of mere hypothesis, he argued, but historical fact. The measurements and geometric organization of a city and of its quarters are never the result of chance or accident or simply of economic necessity, but rather an order of a city and its quarters constitute the area which is not only aesthetic and technical but also moral and legislative.

Krier claims, for instance, that “the whole of Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 is a pre-industrial city which still works, because it is so adaptable, which the new creations of the 20th century will never be. A city like Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes , sometimes abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, in the south east of England, about north-west of London. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes...

 cannot 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

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, are not cities), but against a tendency in urban growth, evident in the growing scale in urban blocks 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 human scale, with size determined not by zoning and transport routes, but by artisan industries, neighbourhood quartiers, and that one should be able to walk from one end of the quartier to the other within ten minutes.

Krier has applied his theories in several large-scale, detailed plans for cities in the Western world, including: Kingston upon Hull

Kingston upon Hull

Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...

 (1977), Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 (1977), Luxembourg

Luxembourg

Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...

 (1978), West Berlin

West Berlin

West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...

 (1980-83), Bremen

Bremen

The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A commercial and industrial city with a major port on the river Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area . Bremen is the second most populous city in North Germany and tenth in Germany.Bremen is...

 (1980), Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

 (1981), Poing Nord, Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 (1983), Washington D.C, (1984), Atlantis, Tenerife

Tenerife

Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...

 (1988) and Poundbury

Poundbury

Poundbury is an experimental new town or urban extension on the outskirts of Dorchester in the county of Dorset, England.The development is built on land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. It is built according to the principles of Prince Charles...

(1989).

A selection of publications

• 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, Architect, Bruxelles, AAM Editions, 1985
• Léon Krier: Architecture & Urban Design 1967-1992, Chicester, John Wiley & Sons, 1993
• Architecture: Choice or Fate, London, Andreas Papadakis Publishers, 1998.

External links

• Léon Krier website
• 2001 interview on New Urbanism
• Salon.com on Choice or Fate (1998)
• Drawings for a Danish Pavillon
• Article 'Cities for Living' by Roger Scruton at city-journal.org
• New Neighbourhood Centre Città Nuova, Alessandria, Italy.