Editorial: Praeteritum est Prologus

by Duncan G. Stroik, appearing in Volume 48

This winter the architecture world mourns the loss of two of the most important leaders in the field who recently passed away. One was a promoter and the other a prophet.

For four decades, Robert A.M. Stern (1939-2025) was one of the foremost architects in the world and Léon Krier (1946-2025) was one of the most influential town planners. Stern had an office of 300 designers while Krier did not have an office, preferring to collaborate with other designers and architects. Stern built hundreds of buildings during his career while Krier built four. Stern was the most prolific and well-known designer of traditional buildings, including university buildings, museums, libraries, condominium towers, and houses. Krier was the godfather of New Urbanism and a leader in the recovery of the traditional European city, influencing the design of villages, town squares, and hundreds of public buildings and houses. We owe them both a great debt for what they accomplished.

Both evolved in their careers, starting out as modernists. Bob became one of the leaders of architectural postmodernism, which brought historical forms into modernism. Krier became well-known during the height of postmodernism in the 1980s for his caricatures of modernism, his designs for new proto-classical buildings, and his demand that new buildings be built in a traditional way. Both were tough critics of the ugliness, inhumanity, and ahistoricity of modern buildings. They took a lot of heat for their views but fought back equally hard.

For those looking for idealistic heroes, Krier was a prophet of the true while Stern was a promoter of the greatness of American architecture. Young architects flocked to their lectures and read their books. Many architects relished the chance to work with Léon Krier on design charrettes for towns across the globe, while others went to New York to work for Robert A.M. Stern, one of the great American stylists transforming cities across the nation. They were both great salesmen, ahead of their time in using print and video media to promote their ideas to a wide audience. They were also excellent speakers, debaters, and masters of the one-liner, such as the time Stern was asked what he thought about a lecture by Peter Eisenman.  “A fifty-minute lecture on a five-minute house.” In one of his last interviews, Léon Krier said that the true punishment for modern architects should be to condemn them to live in their own buildings.

Krier in his youth was a purist and wanted to build buildings with solid masonry walls on medieval streets and squares. For many decades, this resulted in elegant drawings and no built work. Stern on the other hand was a pragmatist, willing to build in economical materials and construction methods. Compromise was natural for him, while for Krier it was anathema.

They came together in the last two decades of their lives at the Yale School of Architecture, where Krier was a visiting professor and Stern was the Dean, enjoying one of the longest tenures at an Ivy League school. They were both consummate educators and had a great impact on a younger generation of architects. Along with teaching, they were interested in knowing the latest about contemporary architecture and urbanism and promoted younger architects through publications, award juries, and commissions.

Neither were outwardly religious men, but they seemed to respect the role of religious buildings in traditional life. Stern designed a number of synagogues, along with college chapels such as at Salve Regina College, in the business school at Notre Dame, and for the Episcopal seminary in Virginia. On the exterior, these chapels were pleasant buildings in Shingle, Gothic, or Georgian style with interiors that were more modern. Krier’s village plans likewise included few spiritual buildings, though the cities he loved were full of churches and centered on a cathedral piazza. He designed a town hall as a chapel for the gated polo village of Windsor, Florida. With references to dovecotes, it feels a bit like a Puritan meeting house with an obelisk in the place of an altar. Yet, at the end of his career, Krier seemed to embrace aspects of traditional sacred architecture when he placed Santa María Reina de la Familia, a large Catholic church with a belltower and a dome, near the center of the new town of Cayalá in Guatemala (featured on the cover of Sacred Architecture vol. 44). This was a big step forward for Léon and the New Urbanist movement which seldom includes religious structures.

Bob was a great promoter of “going back to go forward” in architecture, and he was willing to speak any language and work in any style. Léon was a prophet of the human-scaled city who inspired a generation of town planners and architects to build new human-scaled cities. Both were great defenders of history and the preservation of masterpieces. Léon was a charming fan of the new traditional churches in Sacred Architecture while Bob was a tough critic who hired many of our students from Notre Dame. We owe them a debt of gratitude for their articulate critiques of modernism and their ardent promotion of traditional architecture. Though their focus was the secular, they cleared a path for the renaissance of sacred architecture.