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The Architectural Tuning of Settlements
This is the first in a series of books written by ‘giants’ of traditional urban design, that have contributed to our academic capital. Amusingly and engagingly illustrated, the book is a compact and easy to read 40-page treatise on Krier’s design philosophy.
42 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2008
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About the author
Léon Krier
33 books33 followersLéon Krier was a Luxembourgish architect, architectural theorist, and urban planner, a prominent critic of modernist architecture and advocate of New Classical architecture and New Urbanism. Krier combined an international architecture and planning practice with writing and teaching. He was well known for his master plan for Poundbury, in Dorset, England. He was the younger brother of architect Rob Krier.
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February 21, 2022
The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment produces a series of booklets based on lectures of "unique and senior fellows that contributed to keeping traditional values alive in contemporary teaching and practice." And I picked this one with that hope of finding the X element in Leon Krier's theories that could be helpful to me in my research on urban informality.
And well, I have learnt at least 3 lessons:
1- Architecture and urban planning should always be addressed together, a failure in the first makes the failure in the second inevitable. It sounds intuitive that architecture and urban planning should be seen as one, but we managed as a civilization to encourage a tendency to overspecialization of spaces and ultra-optimization. A reconciliation or tuning as the author calls it requires a framework that pinpoints where things went wrong right?
2- A theory based on the contrast between vernacular and classical architecture and urbanism may deliver a tool to decide whether or not a city had established harmony between the two scales. Basically an ideal city has an architecture that is both classical but more vernacular and an urbanism of the same mix! This theory highlights that some of our aspirations as planners had better to be left as utopias and never designed!
3- I now have a theory thanks to Leon on why Istanbul is one of my favourite cities from an urban practitioner point of view! As crowded as it is with tourists, it has a lot of lessons to give in a simple walk through Beyoglu!
Those are just scattered thoughts, that I might get back to refine...
Otherwise, do read this one it's some 50 pages only!
And well, I have learnt at least 3 lessons:
1- Architecture and urban planning should always be addressed together, a failure in the first makes the failure in the second inevitable. It sounds intuitive that architecture and urban planning should be seen as one, but we managed as a civilization to encourage a tendency to overspecialization of spaces and ultra-optimization. A reconciliation or tuning as the author calls it requires a framework that pinpoints where things went wrong right?
2- A theory based on the contrast between vernacular and classical architecture and urbanism may deliver a tool to decide whether or not a city had established harmony between the two scales. Basically an ideal city has an architecture that is both classical but more vernacular and an urbanism of the same mix! This theory highlights that some of our aspirations as planners had better to be left as utopias and never designed!
3- I now have a theory thanks to Leon on why Istanbul is one of my favourite cities from an urban practitioner point of view! As crowded as it is with tourists, it has a lot of lessons to give in a simple walk through Beyoglu!
Those are just scattered thoughts, that I might get back to refine...
Otherwise, do read this one it's some 50 pages only!
Displaying 1 of 1 review