Leon Krier Quotes & Sayings

Cities and landscapes are illustrations of our spiritual and material worth. They not only express our values but give them a tangible reality. They determine the way in which we use or squander our energy, time, and land resources. — Leon Krier

Modernist architecture and town planning is inimical to human beings ... based on the Darwinian concept that evolution is open ended, that there must always be something new and better. — Leon Krier

A city can only be reconstructed in the form of urban quarters. A large or a small city can only be reorganized as a large or a small number of urban quarters; as a federation of autonomous quarters. Each quarter must have its own center, periphery and limit. Each quarter must be a city within a city. — Leon Krier

You can't have the finest buildings if they're not in focus. They become like nice cars parked on the street. — Leon Krier

Why should the Eisenhower memorial be over twice the size of WWII Memorial? Why should it be so vast as to comfortably house two Lincoln Memorials, two Washington Monuments, and two Jefferson Memorials - all six at once? — Leon Krier

A city is not an accident but the result of coherent visions and aims. — Leon Krier

Human intelligence is a limited resource. It cannot solve problems caused by ignoring fundamentals of existence. — Leon Krier

I grew up in a small town that was absolutely a perfect embodiment of new urbanism. — Leon Krier

All buildings, large or small, public or private, have a public face, a facade; they therefore, without exception, have a positive or negative effect on the quality of the public realm, enriching or impoverishing it in a lasting and radical manner. The architecture of the city and public space is a matter of common concern to the same degree as laws and language - they are the foundation of civility and civilisation. — Leon Krier

In fact, the public will accept any city plan and skyline provided that its architecture is traditional. — Leon Krier

As is the case with all good things in life - love, good manners, language, cooking - personal creativity is required only rarely. — Leon Krier

Lots of English people say exactly the opposite of what they mean. — Leon Krier

The Eisenhower Memorial competition and project have stirred a remarkable polemic, the center of which is not President Eisenhower or Washington, D.C. but Mr. Gehry and the values he promulgates. — Leon Krier

As long as artists arbitrarily assume the right to decide what is or is not art, it is logical that the public will just as arbitrarily feel that they have the right to reject it. — Leon Krier

If a dictator takes up my ideas, the resulting town will survive the political system that commissioned it and stand as a social good. Besides, modernism rather than classicism has dominated the architecture of totalitarian regimes of both the left and right. — Leon Krier

Against expectations I was charmed by Gehry's Edgemar development, which housed the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and positively awed by the Bilbao Guggenheim. That Gehry is a great artist I have no doubt, but talent and determination are no warrant against confusion, nor are they a guaranty to produce great art. — Leon Krier

You need a prince to make a town in an intellectual sense. Developers want to make money. If they cared about architecture, they'd become architects. I've had so many projects that never came off because they had no sponsor, and not because they were utopian. I just want to build a town that's normal. — Leon Krier

For architecture, nature provides only indications and analogies, not models to imitate. — Leon Krier

Authentic architecture is not the incarnation of the spirit of the age but of the spirit, full stop. — Leon Krier

The problem was Le Corbusier was a genius and an enormous artist, but he tried to resolve problems to which there is no solution. So the idea to demolish the centre of Paris in order to adapt it to the car - he drew it! - is something not even the most bloody dictators conceived. — Leon Krier

Horizontal and vertical sprawl ... are the dinosaurs of an ending fossil-fuel age of synthetic culture. — Leon Krier

Tiredness sets a natural limit to what a human being is prepared to walk daily, and this limit has taught man all through history the size of rural or urban communities. — Leon Krier

The rigidity of a bottle's form does not affect the fluidity of the liquid it contains. — Leon Krier

Viewed from a certain distance and under good light, even an ugly city can look like the promised land. — Leon Krier

The more you densify a city, the more congestion will increase, however technology changes ... cities so packed that they will no longer function ... vertical sprawl. — Leon Krier

Surprisingly, the Eisenhower Memorial design contains almost none of the known Gehry-box of tricks. His giant etched chain-link curtain, first applied in 1979 to hide an ungracious parking garage at Santa Monica Place, is resurrected for Eisenhower to screen the equally graceless facade of the Department of Education. — Leon Krier

I don't build because I am an architect. I can make true architecture because I do not build. — Leon Krier