A Grevenmacher (Luxembourg) native, Krier's architectural journey began with studies in Munich during the 1960s. His illustrious career included a professorship at the Technical University of Vienna and teaching at Yale University in the United States.

Rob Krier was a renowned sculptor, painter, architect, urban designer, educator and theorist. He is a SEASIDE Institute™ Fellow and a recipient of the 2015 SEASIDE Prize™. He is the older brother of fellow architect Léon Krier.

As Seaside Institute Fellow Dan Solomon recently stated about Krier: “For over forty years, Rob’s drawings, his writing and thinking, and his superb body of built work have been a shining beacon for all of us who consider ourselves urbanists. “There is no one—no one in history and certainly who drew the urban space with the poetry and majesty of Rob’s drawings. His built work is in Europe—Berlin, Luxembourg, and his superb recent new towns in Holland – but his influence is international and his impact on American urbanism is profound.”

Krier was a former professor of architecture at Vienna University of Technology, Austria. From 1993 to mid-2010 he worked in partnership with architect Christoph Kohl in a joint office based in Berlin, Germany.

Krier studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich from 1959 to 1964. After graduating, he worked with Oswald Mathias Ungers in Cologne and Berlin (1965–66) and Frei Otto in Berlin and Stuttgart (1967–70). From 1973 to 1975, he was an assistant in the school of architecture at the University of Stuttgart. In 1975, he was guest professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland. From 1976 to 1998, he was professor of architecture at Vienna University of Technology. In addition, in 1996, he was a guest professor at Yale University.

During the past decade of his life he devoted himself to making sculptures in his studios in Berlin and northern Italy, and was prolific in production. He is survived by his wife Roswitha Grutzke and daughter, Nini Kohl.