Rob Krier, Figures

The architect is at all times also an artist. How otherwise would he
be able to tame the three-dimensionality of space and subdue the
urges of physics and structural mechanics with the creations of his
fantasy? This creativity is however mostly restricted purely to its
own field.
Rob Krier, is an exception. Since the beginning of his career in
construction, he has always seen his love of art as a vocation - one
which he nurtures parallel to his work. Fine art should stand in dialogue
with architecture and it is Krier's ambition to have iconographic
themes brought into the latter, so that they might speak equally
to both the occupants of a building and to bystanders, moving
them to thoughtful reflection.
In his Pictorial Journal 1954-1971, Rob Krier describs in compelling
words and pictures how he came to have a twin passion for
fine art and architecture and told of his grammar school years in
Echternach, his studies in Munich and his first taste of professional
life with Oswald Mathias Ungers and Frei Otto. In his Pictorial Journal
1954-1971, which covers the period of Krier's work as a lecturer
and assistant to Prof. Johannes Uhl at Stuttgart University, the text
is restricted to a minimum. The pictures are less colourful, more
composed. The 'daily scribbles' dominate - mainly sketches and
drawings of people and animals, buildings, landscapes, objects and
also fantasies. The volume is rounded off with a detailed résumé.
Born and raised in Luxembourg, Krier moved to Vienna after having
studied in Munich and worked for Oswald Mathias Ungers and
Frei Otto. After teaching posts in Stuttgart and Lausanne, he was
a professor at the Technische Universität in Vienna from 1976 to
1998 and, in 1986, held a guest professorship at Yale University in
New Haven, Mass. Krier has developed urban-design concepts for
Stuttgart, Vienna, Berlin, Amiens, Montpellier, Leeds, Gothenburg,
Lodz, Amsterdam, Den Haag and many other cities. Projects with
which he was first able to translate his vision of a spatial concept,
such as Rauchstrasse in Berlin, Breitenfurterstrasse in Vienna or
Ritterstrasse with Schinkelplatz in Berlin, repeatedly found their
place in international publications.