Leon Krier Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

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

Leon Krier

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

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

Leon Krier

#9. In fact, the public will accept any city plan and skyline provided that its architecture is traditional.

Leon Krier

#10. 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

#11. For architecture, nature provides only indications and analogies, not models to imitate.

Leon Krier

#12. Human intelligence is a limited resource. It cannot solve problems caused by ignoring fundamentals of existence.

Leon Krier

#13. Horizontal and vertical sprawl ... are the dinosaurs of an ending fossil-fuel age of synthetic culture.

Leon Krier

#14. A city is not an accident but the result of coherent visions and aims.

Leon Krier

#15. 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

#16. I don't build because I am an architect. I can make true architecture because I do not build.

Leon Krier

#17. 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

#18. I grew up in a small town that was absolutely a perfect embodiment of new urbanism.

Leon Krier

#19. Authentic architecture is not the incarnation of the spirit of the age but of the spirit, full stop.

Leon Krier

#20. The rigidity of a bottle's form does not affect the fluidity of the liquid it contains.

Leon Krier

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

Leon Krier

#22. Lots of English people say exactly the opposite of what they mean.

Leon Krier