A Visionary and Controversial Figure – On the Death of Léon Krier

At the age of 15, Léon Krier became fascinated by Le Corbusier. He bought six books about his work and wanted to be like the famous architect. But admiration turned to aversion: Le Corbusier knew nothing about urban planning, and his city designs were a disaster, Krier finally concluded. He dropped out of his studies at the University of Stuttgart after a short time. All the students designed industrial concrete slab buildings, he recalled in an interview with Die Welt on his 70th birthday (in German). Anyone who drew “something sensible” was dismissed. Krier, who originally wanted to become an aeronautical engineer or pilot and was introduced to architecture by his older brother Rob, preferred to study under James Stirling. He then moved to West Berlin to study under Josef Paul Kleihues. But he did not feel at home on the Spree: “I hated this city from the first day to the last,” he said of his time in Berlin. “The ugliness! On Kurfürstendamm, old buildings were stripped of their stucco and trimmed with brown and white horizontal stripes in the style of Erich Mendelsohn.” The pain of losing historic European cityscapes would shape Krier as an architect and theorist. He left Berlin after two years, partly because his designs were not well received in the office. Instead, Rem Koolhaas's mentor Elia Zenghelis brought him to London to teach at the renowned Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA).

In the 1960s, fellow architects, writers, sociologists, activists, and philosophers harshly criticized modernist urban planning. Jane Jacobs fought against the destruction of established neighborhoods in New York with protests and articles. In 1961, the American-Canadian activist settled scores with modernist urban planning in her most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. In Germany, Gina Angress, Elisabeth Niggemeyer, and Wolf Jobst Siedler launched a frontal attack on post-war urban design in 1964 with Die gemordete Stadt (The Murdered City). Krier also sharpened his criticism of modernist urban planning. He blamed the separation of functions for traffic chaos and waste of resources, and saw industrial construction as the reason for uniform, identity-less urban landscapes. Krier became the spokesman for a movement that called for the reconstruction of European cities.

He liked to express his criticism with biting drawings: in 1979, he caricatured Le Corbusier with a head made of factory chimneys, airplanes, rockets, construction cranes, and the American flag. He stirred up public opinion with alternative architectural designs. One of the best known was created after Krier learned of plans to develop the Kirchberg Plateau in his native Luxembourg. He designed a new capital for Europe. Two boulevards lined with administrative and cultural buildings, but also shops, cafés, and restaurants, run through the complex. At their intersection, Krier planned a large community building with a huge wooden roof. He divided the city into manageable neighborhoods, and to avoid the functional separation of modernism, banks, for example, were to have residential floors.

Krier's ideal was a polycentric city made up of neighborhoods for a maximum of 15,000 people. All important facilities were to be within ten minutes' walking distance. And instead of industrial construction methods, he called for a return to craftsmanship and the formal repertoire of historical buildings.

In 1985, Léon Krier published a monograph on Albert Speer. The book, which was produced with the support of Hitler's favorite architect and armaments minister, caused a scandal. Krier had edited several original photographs from the Nazi era for the lavish volume in such a way as to enhance their impact. For example, he superimposed a starry sky over the Great Hall and Hitler's palace. However, his reputation was damaged even more by the fact that he detached Speer's architecture from its political context and, in his admiration, ignored how closely it was linked to enslavement, war, and genocide.

Bookstores boycotted Albert Speer: Architecture 1932–1942. Krier got into a dispute with the influential architect and theorist Peter Eisenman and lost the commission to expand the National Gallery in London. He couldn't understand why friends and companions turned away from him, whose own parents had suffered under German occupation and who considered himself a leftist. In the aforementioned interview with Die Welt, he called Speer a mass murderer, but when asked about the altered images, he replied defiantly: “Why not? The experts didn't even recognize one of my montages.” He had inserted the audience of a Mussolini speech into a model photo of the interior of the Great Hall: “This image is widely published, but without reference to my book.” Despite all the criticism, even decades after the scandal surrounding his book, Krier preferred to rave about Speer's architecture and make suggestions for improvements rather than confronting his crimes and critically discussing his designs.

Krier's career took another turn in 1988 when he was commissioned by the now King Charles III to design the model town of Poundbury in the county of Dorset, England. He divided the site into five neighborhoods in accordance with his urban planning ideals and developed a mixed-use development of low-rise houses. Only monuments such as the market hall were to be taller. American architect Andrés Duany drew up design guidelines for the individual buildings, which were completed in the 1990s. Poundbury became a key work of postmodern architecture and is popular with its residents. Whether the buildings and urban layout actually do justice to their historical models remains to be seen.
 

Léon Krier received numerous awards for his work, including the inaugural Driehaus Architecture Prize in 2003, the Berlin Prize for Architecture, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture, and the European Culture Prize. The passionate and controversial architect died on June 17, 2025, at the age of 79.