Leon Krier the Town Paper

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T H E T O W N P A P E R

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People Who Make a Difference: Lon Krier

By Karen O'Keefe

In a conversation with Lon Krier, one is reminded that we live in a fragmented universe and the wayto find a cohesive path is to look within -- and know ourselves well enough as a whole -- that we canapply all of who and what we are to what we create.

In his visionary architectural and planning work, Luxembourg-born Lon Krier creates with his past --his Luxembourg family and cultural roots -- and his present. He is clearly guided by an open mind,growing self-knowledge and a respect for wholeness.

Krier is a world-renowned practitioner, theorist and teacher, most closely associated with his advocacyof traditional architecture and urbanism. In March 2003, he was the inaugural recipient of the DriehausPrize, which honors a major contributor in the field of traditional and classical architecture or historicpreservation.

In presenting the award, a committee of architects and educators wrote, "Mr. Krier has producedvisionary work and changed attitudes about how to build a sustainable built environment incontemporary life. [He] believes architecture should not be left to architects alone.

"He says the world is paying a high price for abandoning architecture to the whims of experts,

forsaking a healthy urban effect through the creation of viable communities in favor of fleeting fashion.His views have inspired many notable people -- architecture professionals and amateurs alike -- topursue a better built environment."

A better built environment. When he speaks of his work, one may liken him to a weaver of beautiful,strong cloth. As he looks at the whole cloth of his work -- the built environment -- his eye sees many ofthe individual threads. They each shine differently, each reflecting a different spectrum, each bringinga special gift. As the artist, he knows where each thread came from, what it can do alone and thestrength and richness it brings to a cloth in which it is woven with many others.

Krier tells a story of an adolescent experience that reveals much about Krier the man.

He grew up in Luxembourg with three siblings, a mother -- a musician whose "piano-playing filled thehouse" and a father, a tailor whose workshop occupied the ground floor of the Krier family's

townhouse. It was the family's habit to take holiday trips to Switzerland, France and Italy "to visitplaces of beauty."

Usually, his family experienced "an aesthetic communion of awe and imagination" on the visits, Krierrecalls.

Finally, the year came -- Krier was 17 -- when he was the family member permitted to select adestination. He opted for a trip to Marseilles to see Le Corbusier's Cit Radieuse (built 1947-1952).

Lon was excited about his choice. Luxembourg's traditional architecture was just about all he knew.At the time, he may have thought it rather common.

What he knew of modernist architecture and planning, he had experienced through the books thatbelonged to his older brother Rob, an architect.

Le Corbusier was hot at the time -- had been for more than two decades. "His work inflamed us," Krierrecalls. "Le Corbusier had become for me a second messiah and as a result, I imagined modernistarchitecture to be something superior to all the beautiful buildings I had seen and grown up with so far.

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"They were shocked," he recalls. "I was too." At first the family wondered whether they were at theright address. Poor embarrassed Krier was disappointed that the very first time it is his turn to select aplace to visit, it turned out to be such a disaster.

It was a huge building with over 300 apartments.

Built of a system of modular proportions, the Unite d'Habitation was conceived by Le Corbusier as a

huge structure for autonomous living. It included a shopping street, hotel, gymnasium, childcarefacility, community services and a track.

"A house is a machine for living," Le Corbusier wrote in 1923. He extended the philosophy toeverything he built and designed. The Marseilles structure contained 337 apartments. It was a citywithin a city and utility was its mechanistic lifeblood.

After discovering its "tawdry reality," Krier says "I pretended I liked it for years and allowed myself tothink that maybe my parents were wrong.

"Once you are so excited about something -- you think 'this must be great' -- even though you arehorrified," and despite growing sick, certainty that the structure -- and modernist architecture -- was"socially unacceptable and aesthetically inferior to all we had commonly admired before."

Later, when modernist architecture began to poison Luxembourg, Krier recalls that his eyes werefinally opened wide.

Krier went to study at the University of Stuttgart where "I was told my upbringing [and appreciation forthe traditional architecture and urbanism of Luxembourg] was worth nothing."

He left school to collaborate with London architect James Stirling for six years. "I wanted to get awayfrom that deadly teaching.

"I was trying to find something that was not the same awful stuff that I had seen [everywhere else.]"

Stirling, a Scotsman, was an early "Brutalist" (which is still a modernist) and not what Krier wasseeking either.

In 1974, he became a professor of architecture and town planning at the architectural association andRoyal College of Arts in London. He went on to teach at Princeton and, in 1982, at the University ofVirginia.

Krier says his early teaching years were important -- "in the '70s it was income." Also, teaching had animportant role in helping Krier crystallize his own ideas. They were different from other people's ideas-- and he says there were no books that encapsulated his ideas

With a wry smile, he explains, "Back then I didn't know anyone [to trust with the ideas and material] soI gave all the lectures myself. It was really a great way to ripen the material."

In the United States, Krier is considered the mind and spirit that has become the impetus of the newurbanism movement. Krier describes new urbanism in a recent article, "Planning for Humanity," as

"not a transcendental ideology, but a versatile technique of settling land. Though its goal is to createor restore communities, it does not posit these as products of self-sacrificing fantasy but asstructures which best serve the self-interests of human individuals and groups, be they families,companies or institutions in rural or urban settings."

On new urbanism, he also wrote, "In order for such communities to work, they need to evolve certainpatterns of public spaces, of density and size, of hierarchy, of admixture and proximity. Theircomplexity, however, should not result from social engineering, but needs to be allowed to growthrough a variety of complementary activities developed on neighbouring plots, forming urbanfrontages along streets, squares, parks or countryside within an urban masterplan."

Krier travels often and comes to the United States frequently. He lives in Provence, France, andteaches, currently at Yale. He has won several prestigious international awards. He lectures andpractices architecture and town planning.

Repugnance and outrage fueled Krier's vision, work ethic and architectural and urban planningmorality. That, in turn, has not only made a difference but changed the world.


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As an artist, Lon Krier knows where each thread in his craftwork comes from, what it can do aloneand the strength and richness it brings to a cloth in which it is woven with many others. As a teacher,writer, practitioner, Krier is sharing that brightness, bringing more wholeness to the places and peoplehe touches -- and the places and people they touch.


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Leon Krier the Town Paper

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