The Future Symphony Institute is greatly honored by this opportunity to announce the appointment of Léon Krier as its newest Senior Fellow. Léon is a tireless champion of conservation, craftsmanship, sustainability, humane scaling, aesthetics, and enduring architectural and urban principles. We gratefully acknowledge the tremendous influence that Léon, through his lifetime of thought and practice, has already had on our understanding of the organic role that classicism plays in the development and functioning of human communities.
Léon Krier represents the best of a new breed of architects in the remarkable way that he elucidates the relationship between our buildings and the institutions of our civilization. He is world-renowned as an architect, an urban planner, and an architectural theorist. Originally from Luxembourg, he was educated in Stuttgart and then in London, and has since held positions at the Royal College of Arts and the Architectural Association there, as well as at both Princeton and Yale here. Notably, he has served as consultant to His Royal Highness, Charles, Prince of Wales since 1987, and from 1988 onwards he has been the masterplanner and architectural coordinator of HRH’s new town of Poundbury.
Léon was the leading figure in the Reconstruction of the European City movement. The Académie Française accordingly awarded him its Silver Medal in 1997 for the clarity and intelligence of his vision for cities, articulated in his book Architecture: Choice Or Fate. The complete body of his theories and his practice of building houses and towns that speak to the human spirit and respond to the patterns and scale of human life is now compiled in his book The Architecture of Community.
Léon is counted chief among the New Classicists. He is himself a great lover of classical music and an accomplished amateur pianist. He has even designed a piano. We are greatly encouraged that Léon is so interested in our work, and we eagerly look forward to our future collaborations and his ongoing influence and inspiration.