Leon Krier Quotes

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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