URBAN SPACES-ROB KRIER

"New Urbanism is not utopian and does not impose social master plans. Instead, it allows the
infinite variety of human talent and ambition to build harmonious and pleasing environments."
 
Leon Krier

New Town of Broekpolder near Amsterdam, Holland

 
by Rob Krier and Christoph Kohl
 "The basic approach of our urban design concept in the
'block' formation. This enables the creation of many
different spatial configurations of squares and street
sequences that give the individual 'places' their indelible
character and offer inhabitants the kind of familiar quality
found in a typical Berlin neighborhood, or Kiez."
 
Rob Krier and Christoph Kohl

Roof View of New Town of Kirchsteigfeld, Potsdam

by Rob Krier and Christoph Kohl

More than just a garden-suburb, Kirchsteigfeld integrates

the open flow of space and light which is the 20th century's
great contribution to housing, while celebrating the historic
qualities of place and identity which we have learned once
more to value in making urban forms for community ."

View across the Hufeisenplatz, Kirchsteigfeld, Potsdam

Working Model of Hufeisenplatz, Kirchsteigfeld, Potsdam

 "Urban Space is created by the built massing and
their elevations. Buildings are therefore space-
forming. The designer of a building is consequently
responsible for the image that is created
and imposed upon the user. Buildings mark their
surroundings and must accordingly capture the
'genius loci' and reflect this 'spirit of the place' in
which they are located. In this sense buildings
'serve' their context and the people which inhabit
New Town of Kirchsteigfeld, Potsdam
Existing Buildings and Proposed Completion
them"
 
  Rob Krier and Christoph Kohl

Maimi-von-Mirbach Strasse, Kirchsteigfeld, Potsdam

 Rob Krier

• A Romantic Rationalist, Architect and Urban Planer.

• Rob Krier ranks as one of the most influential urban planners and architects of post-
modernism. Rob Krier has always taken the historic repertoire seriously. For him, continuity
and aestheticism are ways of reviving what he regards as the art of architecture that lost
its way in modernism. Though his retrospective viewpoint and, in particular, his increasingly
literal adoption of historic forms may have earned him criticism, his urban districts and
residential developments are in demand. In recent years, he has enjoyed unprecedented
success, especially in the Netherlands. Krier creates urban spaces that are pleasant to live
in; places with which the inhabitants can identify. His small and lovingly designed low-density
houses – usually created in collaboration with other architects give people a sense of a
recognizable individual lifestyle.

• Krier’s urban development plans and reconstructions are deliberately moulded in the
tradition of the European city and they owe much to Camillo Sitte’s visions of empty and
built urban space. Krier creates clearly defined yet diverse and varied urban spaces whose
cohesiveness is achieved by linking them axially.
• It was his 1975 manifesto Stadtraum (published in English in 1979 under the title Ur-ban
Space) that first brought Rob Krier to the attention of a broader public. From that moment
on, urban planning became his domain, although he had initially set out with the dream of
designing cathedrals, town halls and other public buildings. And so Rob Krier has become
better known as an urban planner than as an architect, draughts-man and sculptor.

• Rob Krier is one of the most remarkable and talented architectural draughtsmen of the
twentieth century. His colourful, detailed drawings are more like vedutas. They are lyrical,
opulent and teeming with figures. Rob Krier’s portrayals of architecture are in the tradition
of the painterly “architecture picture”. In the work of Rob Krier, the re-iteration and
revival of this painterly maniera is the logical consequence of his archi-tectural approach,
whose leitmotif is a spatial concept in the tradition of European urbanism.
• Visiting Stuttgart, Germany for about a half day ten years ago, I was impressed by the
pedestrian nature of the city, probably the most suited to walking of any European city
I visited at that time. One could walk across parts of the city without ever encountering
automobile traffic, achieved via bridges and viaducts. The pedestrian malls along the
way reinforced this apparent importance on walking.
• The urban condition of Stuttgart, Rob Krier's hometown, is very important to the
architect/planner. One of the four chapters of Urban Space is devoted to the
reconstruction of devastated parts of the city center. Although I can't say for sure
how much of Krier's exhaustive plan influenced the city's efforts, his plan is intended
more as a critique of Modern planning than as a realistically realizable scheme. The first
two chapters set up the extreme dialectic between traditional, shaped urban space and
the leftover space created by Modern planning and its object-centric approach to
architecture. Abundant illustrations - primarily plans and perspective views - are used to
get across this message, one that is undeniable while regrettably ignoring the political
mechanisms that have allowed Modern planning to take precedence over traditional
forms of planning. Now thirty years old, this book no less relevant today, though the
author's plans seem just as dated as the ones he feverishly rallied against.
• Krier’s view of typologies is a bit different than
• Rossi’s view. He concentrated on typologies of
• public space rather building types. Krier
• believes the physical form of the city is
• determined by the relationships between the
• streets and the open spaces, the elevations
• and sections that enclose them [4] leading to
• volumetric and 3-D understanding of the city.
• It is by studying these elements of urban space
• that a series of typologies may be generated.
• The typologies originate from three main
• forms: square, circular, or triangular. Through
• a diagrammatic process, Krier makes various
• adjustments to the forms. For example, he
• says the forms can be independent or work
• together; they can transform through
• processes, such as addition, overlapping, and
• penetrating, etc [15].
• Both Rossi and Krier suggest approaches
• Following the success of his
• widely acclaimend Urban Space, a work which looked at
the problems
• of our cities from a historical, theoretical and practical
standpoint,
• Krier now applies his particular, highly influential mode
of didactic
• criticism to contemporary architecture in continuing
search
• for fundamental architectural truths