In Drawing for Architecture, architect Léon Krier makes an impassioned argument against what he sees as the unquestioned doctrines and unacknowledged absurdities of contemporary architecture. Through more than 200 provocative doodles, drawings, and ideograms — all drawn with wit and grace — he calls for a return to traditional architecture, building, and settlement techniques as a means of ecological reconstruction.

Drawing for Architecture does not try to please or flatter the architectural establishment. Rather, Krier challenges what he sees as "Random Uniformity" ("fake simplicity") and "Uniform Randomness" ("fake complexity"). He draws bloated "bulimic" and disproportionately scrawny "anorexic" columns flanking a graceful "classical" one. And he compares "private virtue" (modernist architects' homes and offices) to "public vice" (modernist architects' "creations").

In an age of energy crisis, Krier writes (and his drawings show) that we "build in the wrong places, in the wrong patterns, materials, densities, and heights, and for the wrong number of dwellers." His humane and gentle vision of what a city might be should be required reading for all architects and urbanists.

Léon Krier has taught at the Architectural Association, the Royal College of Arts, the University of Virginia, Princeton University, and Yale University. He has been an architectural consultant to the Prince of Wales since 1988 and is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture and the Jefferson Memorial Gold Medal.

Author — Léon Krier.

Paperback. 248 pages. 5½" × 8" (14 cm × 20 cm).