This item is the archived peer-reviewed author-version of: Change trumps tradition : the Atlantis project of Léon Krier, 1986-1992 Reference: Verbruggen Sven.- Change trumps tradition : the Atlantis project of Léon Krier, 1986-1992 Journal of architecture - ISSN 1360-2365 - 22:7(2017), p. 1230-1256 Full text (Publisher's DOI): https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2017.1377749 To cite this reference: https://hdl.handle.net/10067/1461130151162165141 Institutional repository IRUA 2,1:69:,8 2,9:8-88:: Sven Verbruggen Affiliated with the University of Antwerp and the University of Ghent (Author’s email address:
[email protected]) ABSTRACT 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 AA School teachers, to becoming an outsider of 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.