Concept

Léon Krier

Summary
Léon Krier CVO (born 7 April 1946) is a Luxembourgish architect, architectural theorist, and urban planner, a prominent critic of modernist architecture and advocate of New Classical architecture and New Urbanism. Krier combines an international architecture and planning practice with writing and teaching. He is well known for his master plan for Poundbury, in Dorset, England. He is the younger brother of architect Rob Krier. Krier abandoned his architectural studies at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, in 1968, after only one year, to work in the office of architect James Stirling in London, UK. After four years working for Stirling, interrupted by a two-year association with Josef Paul Kleihues in Berlin, Krier spent 20 years in England practicing and teaching at the Architectural Association and Royal 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. From the late 1970s onwards 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 the New Urbanism movement, both in the US and Europe. The most complete compilation of them is published in his book The Architecture of Community. He is best known for his masterplan for, and ongoing oversight of, the development of Poundbury, an urban extension to Dorchester, UK for the Duchy of Cornwall and Charles III; and for his masterplan for Paseo Cayalá, an extension of four new urban quarters for Guatemala City. From 1976 to 2016 Krier was a visiting professor at the Universities of Princeton, Yale, Virginia, Cornell and Notre Dame. From 1987 to 1990 Krier was the first director of the SOMAI, the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Architectural Institute, in Chicago.
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