Figures: A Pictorial Journal – Rob Krier

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 Kriers 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 describes 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 Kriers 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.