Change trumps tradition: the Atlantis project of Léon Krier, 1986–1992

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In 1986, Hans-Jürgen Müller commissioned Léon Krier to design the Atlantis project. Müller, the owner of an art gallery in Germany, planned to host think-tanks at a remote location in Tenerife. His plan was to foster the preservation of European culture, one that for Müller sets standards for proper manners and good behaviour through art and cultural activities. The artistic and architectural setting mediated and cultivated these standards, the demise of which caused the crisis Müller saw in the world. For Krier the project was affiliated with the Rational Architecture exhibition of 1973 and the Reconstruction of the European City Movement.The reception of the Atlantis project is coloured by three factors. First, from the beginning of the 1970s to the early 1990s, Krier went from being included in a select group of teachers at the AA School, London, to becoming an outsider to that same group and its intellectual sphere. Second, the client for the project wanted to be a pioneer in the cultural sector and use its larger socio-political influence for ideological purposes. And finally, in the specialised press and popular media, Krier, the clients, the project, the ideological statements, and a diffuse mixture of all of this, were often negatively received.The Atlantis project came at a decisive moment in Krier's career. At the same time, the project's history is emblematic of a crucial turn in architectural discourse. The oppositional narratives within post-modernism had gone from possible rapprochement to complete antipathy. The Atlantis project itself was never constructed, and with it the idea that a renewed traditional discourse could belong to one unified architectural agenda emerged and also evaporated.