This was my first encounter with Léon Krier — his obnoxious, hilarious, response to a fellow architect’s presentation of his latest project:
I don’t imagine the much-laureled Tadao Ando was too upset; but I enjoyed Krier’s contempt. He hated the vapid deadly form of modernism Ando embodied, and didn’t mind showing it.
Krier, who has died, enjoyed his own renown, though he drew more than he built, in part because he wanted large urbanist projects rather than single structures, and these were hard to get developed. But you can find his work at Seaside FL, site of the Truman Show, and a pricey, popular, resort town/tourist draw. And, in England, at the equally successful Poundbury:
[U]nlike so many lifeless developer-built estates, it combined industrial space, stores and small workshops among the housing, now employing 2,600 people in 250 businesses. It has worked: house prices are up to a quarter higher than the surrounding area, while 35% of the homes are affordable, scattered throughout the development, rather than corralled into separate blocks.
Derided as reactionary, nostalgic, and authoritarian, Krier was an enemy of capitalist excess who realized, rightly, that most people prefer living a grounded existence (rather than a remote, abstracted, skyscraper one) in a meaningful town with architecturally recognizable shops, libraries, churches, schools, cafes, and the rest within walking distance. Many of his realized projects, like Seaside, are, again, madly popular, which UD thinks vindicates his earthy, historically grounded, daily social mixing, instinct. The larger, well-known movement, New Urbanism, that he inspired, has been hugely successful here and in Europe.
Of course UD‘s own Garrett Park has many of the characteristics Krier championed; but a town a few miles away from her – Kentlands – was directly conceived in his New Urbanist style, and has been a big hit.
Krier understood and loathed and elaborated upon the perversion of the penthouse, the social sickness of sky-high surveillance states like Monaco and parts of NYC, and for that alone I am grateful.