Rob Krier

Biography

In 1975 a book called “Stadtraum in Theorie und Praxis” came out in Stuttgart. Its author, an assistant in the architecture department of the local technical university, was thirty-six, and using Stuttgart itself as his example he analysed how postwar modernist development had destroyed streets and squares. The book was translated into English, French, Italian and Spanish; the English edition appeared in London in 1979 under the title “Urban Space”.

Rob (Robert) Krier was born on 10 June 1938 in Grevenmacher, Luxembourg. He grew up in Echternach and in Luxembourg itself, where his father ran a tailor’s workshop. His younger brother Léon also became an architect.

Rob studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich from 1959 to 1964. He then worked for Oswald Mathias Ungers in Cologne and Berlin (1965–1966), and afterwards for Frei Otto in Berlin and Stuttgart (from 1967; the end date is given variously as 1970 or 1971). For Otto he built a studio house in Warmbronn in 1969, and earlier, in 1968, a house for three families in the same village. From 1973 to 1975 he was an assistant at the University of Stuttgart, and in 1975 he lectured at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. From 1976 to 1998 Krier was a professor at the Vienna University of Technology, where he headed the institute of design (Gestaltungslehre). In 1976 he also opened his own office in Vienna, and he taught at Yale University as a visiting professor (the year is given as 1996 or as 1986).

He tested his theory in practice. In Berlin, as part of the International Building Exhibition (IBA 1987), housing blocks built around the edge of their plots were erected to his designs on Ritterstrasse (1977–1980 and 1982–1988), together with town villas on Rauchstrasse (from 1980). In Vienna, on Breitenfurter Strasse, a municipal housing complex with a circular courtyard was built in 1981–1987, and at its centre stands his sculptural group “Memorial: Shadow and Light”. The largest project of those years was the Kirchsteigfeld district in Potsdam (1992–1997): 24 architectural offices worked to his urban plan.

In 1993 Krier moved his office from Vienna to Berlin and went on working with Christoph Kohl. Until mid-2010 they carried out projects across Europe, most of them in the Netherlands: De Resident in The Hague, Noorderhof and Meander in Amsterdam, Brandevoort near Helmond, Gildenkwartier in Amersfoort, Slot Haverleij near ’s-Hertogenbosch. From 1992 to 2004 he also ran a joint office with Nicolas Lebunetel in Montpellier. After June 2010 he remained at the Berlin firm as senior advisor. With his brother Léon he took part in the Cité Judiciaire project in Luxembourg, built in 2003–2008.

He never gave up sculpture. Two bronze figures four metres high stand in the port of Barcelona (1986–1988), a bronze “Rafter” (3.5 m) on the Auerbrücke in Pforzheim, a “Crouching Woman” on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, and a group 5.5 metres high adorns De Resident in The Hague. It seems to me that for him the figures were an extension of the street space rather than decoration, but as far as I know he never said so directly.

In 2003 Krier gave his entire preliminary archive to the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt. The exhibition “Rob Krier: A Romantic Rationalist” ran there from 6 August to 30 October 2005. He received honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects (1996) and of the Association of German Architects (1997), the Athena Medal of the Congress for the New Urbanism (2009) and the Driehaus Architecture Prize of the University of Notre Dame (2022).

Rob Krier died in Berlin on 20 November 2023.