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Reading this book I could 'physically' feel the poison of classicism slowly and gently invading my veins. Is it a therapy or an addiction?
Bernardo Bertolucci
This book should be on the table of all contemporary architects; but they would go bright red whenever they looked at it.
Jean Dutourd of the Académie Française
Living in a traditional home and driving a fast car are not as incompatible as modernists would have us believe. We are in fact witnessing a worldwide renaissance of traditional architecture and urbanism, and its near-universal condemnation by the modernist mafia has had no influence on rising sales of traditional houses. We live in a society of free choice in politics and food, in religion and lifestyle, in work and play. And so why should our choice be restricted in architecture and urbanism?
Léon Krier, theorist and reformer of modern traditional architecture and urbanism, reveals in this layman's manifesto why - in matters of democracy - architecture is far behind politics. The fact that modernism has never been a popular choice is not, according to Krier, due to people's ignorance but to modernism's own conceptual poverty. Architecture cannot be left to architects alone. We all have to live with architecture and we all have strong feelings about it, whether knowingly or unconsciously, simply because we like or dislike a place, a house, or a city.
This polemic is essential reading for anyone concerned with the state and direction of architecture and urban planning today. It will provoke wide-ranging discussion and will be a vital tool in the renaissance of the art of building cities that are pleasant and agreeable to live in, an art that we are in danger of losing.
About the Author:
Léon Krier, the masterplanner of Poundbury, the Prince of Wales's new city in Dorset, is internationally known as a renovator of traditional architecture and urbanism. He was born in 1946 in Luxembourg and has recently moved to Provence after living in London for more than twenty years.
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Architecture: Choice or Fate was the recipient of the silver medal of the Académie Française
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