'Elements of Architecture' by Rob Krier

     Since my trip to London and Cambridge I've been in a bit of a PoMo mood. So a fortnight or so ago I treated myself to this book, 'Elements of Architecture' by Rob Krier, Leon Krier's older brother.  I remember seeing other books by Rob Krier back in the 80s and really I should have bought them at the time, but to my regret I didn't.

     'Elements of Architecture' was first published in 1982, by Academy Editions, and edited by Dr Andreas Papadakis.  I have the 1992 edition.  It quickly established itself as an important text of architectural Post-Modernism, along with 'Learning from Las Vegas' (1972) by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown & Stephen Izenour, and Charles Jenck's 'The Language of Post-Modern Architecture' (1977), becoming a set text in many schools of architecture.  Whereas the other two books are largely are theoretical, 'Elements of Architecture' stands in the tradition of books produced by, say, the likes of James Gibbs and Batty Langley in 18th century England, that engage on both a theoretical and practical level with the reader.  They are meant to be a sourcebook of ideas for the designer, and they are essentially pattern books.  And in that Krier's book is no different.  There is however in contrast to, for example, Gibbs's 'Book of Architecture' Krier presents the reader with a series of ideal, slightly Platonic, types - facades, spaces, plans, stairs, etc.  An attempt, perhaps, to establish new typologies of building.  One is therefore tempted to believe that the work Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (1760-1834), the French architect and theorist, is a more pertinent comparison here.  For instance, the 'Rudimenta Opera Magnis et Disciplinae' c. 1790, which seems to have least some influence on Krier's graphic presentation and his vigorous drawing style - which is all together engaging.  In fact, one of the delights of this book are the large colour reproductions of Krier's drawings at the beginning.

     But whither Post-Modernism? It was, I suppose, a short efflorescence - lasting - what? - some twenty years or so. In some respects though its presence has remained, and in recent years there has even been a revival of sorts.  In Britain, for example, we have the 'Blue House' by FAT, the 'House for Essex' by FAT and Grayson Perry, the 'Red House, by David Kohn, and the work of Camille Walala, and Adam Nathaniel Furman.  Most of this is toward the playful end of Post-Modernism. In Italy there is the austere work of Paolo Zermani, with its echoes of Robert Venturi, Aldo Rossi and the whole Rationalist and Neo-Rationalist schools, and the Scuola Metafisica.
     Sadly, however, I feel this book's lesson will have to learnt all over again by the professionals.  Really, the architectural profession are like the Bourbons: 'They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing'.*

Further reading

'Elements of Architecture', Rob Krier, Academy Editions, 1982 &1992

'Rob Krier on Architecture', Rob Krier, Academy Editions, 1982

'Architectural Composition' Rob Krier, Academy Editions, 1988

'Rob Krier: Architecture and Urban Design' (Architectural Monographs No 30), Academy Editions, 1993

'Urban Space, with examples from the city of Stuttgart' Rob Krier, Academy Editions, 1975

*Usually accredited (and wrongly?) to Charles Maurice Talleyrand-Perigord.  Napoleon called Talleyrand 'that turd in a silk stocking'.

Leon Krier 1946 - 2025

      A prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, and his own house.

      It is nearly a week now since the death was announced of the visionary architect and planner Leon Krier.  For most of his life he was a prophet in his own country and largely without honour.  Certainly he was disliked within his own household of architecture by plenty in the profession and associated journalists. I think he may have been held in suspicion by some of the few traditionalist architects working in the UK at the time.  One of the reasons for this was stylistic; Krier's classicism was like nothing else, and it certainly was not 'English', certainly not the early 19th century Neo-classical rectory ideal.  Unlike them, LK was a polemicist - a rather ungentlemanly thing, perhaps - happy to take the war to the enemy.  'They', after all, had been at war with the city for years - and continue to be so.  And then there was his implacable hostility to compromise; 'I am an architect because I don't build', he stated.  He was suspected of having private income, and his desire for a better 'work-life balance' was held in suspicion both by Modernist and Traditionalist - how could he be serious?

     Leon Krier was born in 1946 in Luxembourg in a Europe damaged by war and beginning a process of reconstruction.  And I suppose it was that process of rebuilding, and its manifest failures, that contributed to his conversion from Modernist to Classicist/Traditionalist. In 1968, after a year at the University of Stuttgart reading architecture, he moved to London and the office of James Stirling. He stayed for some four years before striking out on his own.  At this point architecture had reached a crisis and 'the ever more militant conservation movement suddenly found itself standing victorious over the collapsed remnants of the Modern Movement.'*  (Charles Jencks, tongue in cheek perhaps, pinpointed the time and place of the demise of Modernism thus: "Modern architecture died in St Louis, Missouri on July 15 at 3.32pm (or thereabouts)."  That was the moment when the city authorities blew up the Pruitt-Ilgoe housing complex designed by Minoru Yamsaki.)
      As I wrote earlier this month about the optimism that a scheme such as the Comyn Ching Triangle evoked.  I think the 1970s/80s was an exciting time in London architecturally.  Change was in the air.  LK was part of this. There was the regular column in Andreas Papadakis's AD Magazine.  At a time when Hugh Cumming was editor.  Yes, I think it was that monthly column that got me hooked on his work, the designs also and those clever cartoons.  LK had a very direct way of communication.  And there was the flat in Belsize park where he lived with his then wife the artist Rita Wolff.  I went there a number times and it really was something.  I suppose it was, and perhaps still is, one of the most sophisticated spaces I 've yet experienced.  In the early-ish 1980s I rather cheekily wrote to him to see if he would be kind enough to look over my work. I was invited down to London and his flat.  I suppose he was the first intellectual I had met.  Thankfully there was ego at at work and he kind and generous - not only with his time (we talked for hours, only taking a break because he had a piano lesson), but with his books.  I left with three!  As you may know I went on to Kingston Poly (as was) to read architecture.  It was not a good place for me.  There was barely any formal education, and it had an intellectual life like - well, I don't remember one.  I became withdrawn and isolated and that meant amongst other things that shamefully I failed to maintain by friendship with LK, when it may have been in part at least, an antidote to life at Kingston.  I still regret my stupidity.

Further Reading

'Leon Krier: drawings 1967-1980' Leon Krier, Archives d'Architecture Moderne, 1980

'Rational Architecture: The  Reconstruction of the European City' Leon Krier, Archives d'Architecture Moderne, 1985

'Architecture: Choice or Fate'  Leon Krier, Andreas Papadakis, 1998

'Drawing for Architecture', Leon Krier, The MIT Press, 2009

'The Architecture of Community' Leon Krier, Island Press, 2009

'Leon Krier: scritti e disegni', Edizione Cluva, 1980, English ed 1984

'Leon Krier: Houses, Palaces, Cities' Demetri Porphyrios, Academy Editions, 1985

'Leon Krier Architecture and Urban Design 1967-1992' Leon Krier, Richard Economakis, David Watkin, Academy Editions, 1992

* 'Scottish Architeture'. Miles Glendinning and Aonghus MacKechnie.  Thames & Hudson, 2004