Léon Krier obituary: architect who designed Poundbury

Times

20-06-2025

Léon Krier once described himself as 'an architect, because I don't build'. As a minority voice in his profession who deplored the modernism that had dominated postwar architecture, Krier said he had made himself redundant. He assumed that he would remain a 'utopianist' for the rest of his life. Then he met Prince Charles (now the King).
By the mid-Eighties the Prince of Wales was the British architecture profession's public enemy No 1 after a speech in 1984 in which he described a proposed extension of the National Gallery as a 'monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend'.
Charles and the London-based architectural theorist and academic Krier were destined to meet. They did so at an exhibition in 1986 to present Krier's masterplan to restore a Georgian quarter of London's Spitalfields that was under threat from modern development. Krier's elegant drawings acted like catnip on the royal visitor.
'He [Charles] said, 'Let's talk',' recalled the Luxembourg-born Krier, who wore slightly dandified Edwardian-style outfits topped off by his trademark silk scarves and had the air of a central European intellectual. 'And then he [Charles] said 'Would you like to be my consultant on architecture and particularly on urbanism?' and I said, 'Wow, my God. How could I refuse.' And then we'd meet at strange times and places. Like 3am with some Russian princess in Chelsea.' He remembered feeling touched by the 'desperate, even tragic ring' to Charles's voice when lamenting architecture.
Charles had continued to blame architects for ruining postwar Britain, but in 1988 seized his chance to develop his own urban Arcadia on 400 acres of land, near the Dorset town of Dorchester, owned by his Duchy of Cornwall. The development would be planned in rigorous accordance with Krier's 'New Urbanist' principles of human scale. No building could be more than five storeys and would be configured in traditional street patterns. Houses and businesses would exist cheek by jowl. 'Timeless' materials of stone, brick and wood would be used. No one could be more than 15 minutes away from all the amenities they might need and even their place of work. Car use would be minimal. To reduce the urban sprawl he so deplored, he proposed reintroducing terraced housing that had become anathema to the modernists.
It was a social experiment to disprove so much of the postwar urban redevelopment that replaced traditional street patterns and market squares with dual carriageways through town and city centres surrounded by residential tower blocks and the zoning of residential and commercial uses that created car-dependent suburban sprawl. 'Modernism is a totalitarian ideology which, like all dogmatism, is based on unprovable assumptions,' Krier said.
About a year after starting on the project, Krier presented his masterplan for Poundbury, replete with Italianate piazzas linked by tree-lined streets. The plan was strong on details, from elaborate lampposts to wrought-iron fencing. Alarmed staff at the Duchy of Cornwall warned Charles that Krier's plans would be far too expensive. Krier countered that the rise in values would justify the cost in the long run. According to Clive Aslet's recent book King Charles III: 40 years of Architecture, the duchy appointed the surveyors Drivers Jonas to 'rein Krier in'.
Krier had walked away from many other projects for less. 'He was gentle but uncompromising in everything he did, preferring to withdraw than be drawn into political skirmishes, inhuman bureaucracy or pollute his designs,' said his wife Irene.
Matters came to a head at the prince's home, Highgrove, in Gloucestershire, when Krier, Christopher Jonas and Charles looked at the plans laid out on the large dining table. Jonas said: 'Sir, we will of course take on board what Mr Krier says.' The prince banged his fist on the table and replied: 'Christopher, you are not going to take on board what Leo says, you are going to do what he tells you.'Krier recalled: 'From then on it was open war. He called me from everywhere saying, 'You can't do this.' And I'd say, 'You have to do it. The prince wants it and he is The Boss.''
In June 1989 a marquee was erected at Poundbury Farm and the public were invited to view Krier's masterplan. It was an exercise in community architecture run by Charles's friend, the architect John Thompson. Sometimes the prince himself would arrive by helicopter and drop in on meetings unannounced. The marquee was packed and local people were mostly won round, although many thought that the buildings were too classical. An unabashed classicist by personal taste, Krier revised his plans with vernacular architecture more in keeping with the surrounding area.
Planning permission for phase one was achieved in 1991. Britain was in the midst of a property crash, which many smugly predicted would scupper Poundbury — especially as Krier had ignored the advice of property experts and sited affordable housing alongside the more expensive private properties.
As the buildings started to rise up in 1993, the profession went to war on Poundbury. It was sneeringly described as a 'Toy Town' pastiche of neoclassicism with its portentous porticos and public squares. A critic in this newspaper once said: 'If Hallmark were to film a Christmas movie in Britain, Poundbury would be an ideal setting.'
Yet over the years the community has continued to thrive. There are now some 4,500 people living there, with 185 businesses sustaining 2,300 jobs. Poundbury has been visited by architects, planners and developers from all over the world. The estate agent Savills reported that Poundbury homes are on average worth 25 per cent more than other homes on the local market.
Krier himself lived for many years in a townhouse in Belsize Park, north London, full of 19th-century Biedermeier furniture. To his critics in the profession Krier said: 'Look at where architects live. They live in old traditional houses just as I do. Why do they impose these inhuman structures on others?' For much of Krier's professional life this view was countercultural, but when the tide turned he came to be known as the 'godfather of New Urbanism'.
Léon Ernest Krier was born in Luxembourg in 1946 to Jean Pierre Jacques Krier, a tailor who specialised in ecclesiastical robes and supplied most of the bishops in the country. His mother was Emma Marguerite (née Lanser). He grew up in a small, handsome town that he later described as a 'perfect embodiment of New Urbanism' and attended the Lycée Classique in the baroque monastery of L'Abbaye d'Echternach.
He wanted to be a pianist, but decided to study architecture to follow in the footsteps of his elder brother Robert, whom he hero-worshipped. As a teenager he was a confirmed modernist and dreamt of 'blasting the cities I saw around me and building skyscrapers'. Then he realised that he was 'in love with the cities of Italy'. 'I tried hard to reconcile them with the theories of Le Corbusier. It was impossible.'
He won a place to study architecture at the University of Stuttgart, but found his tutors impossible to talk to. The situation worsened when he researched the work of Albert Speer, the architect of the Third Reich, and his teachers described Krier's scholarship as 'fascist'. He left without graduating and moved to London, where he worked in the office of the modernist architect James Stirling. Four years working for 'big Jim' cured him of any remaining proclivities towards modernism.
After leaving Stirling's office he developed masterplans for Kingston upon Hull, Rome, Luxembourg, West Berlin, Bremen, Stockholm, Munich and Washington, none of which were taken forward. He made his living teaching at the Architectural Association and the Royal College of Art, where he made his reputation as a lone architectural theorist crying in the wilderness.
While working on Poundbury in the Nineties, he also masterplanned the Cité Judiciaire in his native Luxembourg. In recent years he worked on projects in Guatemala City and a new town near San Miguel de Allende in Mexico.
In 2017 it emerged that he was working on a waterside masterplan to redevelop Fawley power station on the Solent, near Southampton, into 1,500 homes on a 300-acre site. The £2.3 billion project became known in the press as 'Venice in Britain', but, without the royal protection he had enjoyed at Poundbury, the scheme was largely cancelled last year after the developers said it was no longer viable.
Krier was divorced from his first wife Rita Wolf, a painter. He is survived by his second wife Irene. Defending his New Urbanist approach to placemaking, Krier said: 'Traditional architecture and urbanism is not an ideology, religion, or transcendental system. It cannot save lost souls or give meaning to empty lives. It is a body of knowledge and know-how allowing us to build practically, aesthetically, socially and economically satisfying cities and structures. Such structures do not ensure happiness but they certainly facilitate the pursuit of happiness for a large majority of people.'
Poundbury is due to be completed in 2028, 35 years after it broke ground, at which point there will be homes for 6,000 people. When he started work on the project Krier was a 43-year-old with what a profile in The Guardian described as 'a mad scientist mop of black hair'. By the time of his death the hair was snowy white but in the same unruly mop and he was proud to be the only member of the original team still involved in the project, along with the King.
Léon Krier CVO, architectural theorist and urban planner, was born on April 7, 1946. He died of colon cancer on June 17, 2025, aged 79