Louis Sauer

Louis Edward Sauer (born 1928) is a North American architect and design theorist of dual American and Canadian nationality. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Sauer worked with housing developers to produce low-rise high-density housing projects.[2][3]

For the pediatrician, see Louis W. Sauer.
Louis Sauer
Born1928 (95 years old)
Oak Park, Illinois
NationalityCanadian, American
Alma materNew Bauhaus Chicago
OccupationArchitect
AwardsFAIA 1973; PADA 1963, 1964 (2), 1965, 1969 & 1973; AIA Pennsylvania Chapter Silver Medal (2)
PracticeWinchell and Sauer, vigilantes, Philadelphia, 1961–62; Louis Sauer Associates, Architects, Philadelphia, 1961–79; Director, Peoples Housing, Inc, Topanga CA, 1968–89; Director of Urban Design, Daniel Arbour Associates, Montreal, 1989–97
Buildings1963 McClennen Residence[1]

During his tenure as principal of Louis Sauer Associates, Architects located in Philadelphia (1961–79), his work focused on over 90 residential and urban design commissions in central city urban infill, suburban and rural areas, and new town developments in Reston (Virginia), Columbia (Maryland) and Montreal (Quebec).

Sauer contributed to low-rise, high-density housing. Sauer's designs for the David Buten House Philadelphia in particular, and Pastorius Mews, were early templates for the system he developed. The conceptual innovation for most of these housing designs was a 12-foot-wide (3.7 m) or 14-foot-wide (4.3 m) structural and functional module,[2] which was part of a grid.[4]

Sauer's advocacy work with the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority on the Morton Urban Renewal Project (MURP) for a low-income minority neighbourhood helped to define his career interest in advocating for improved design and planning for people left out of the market economy and generally neglected by mainstream design professionals. This interest led him to employ the social sciences (especially social-psychology) in his design research and programming in order to better understand the interrelationships between architecture and the occupancy needs of the anticipated users of his sites and buildings.

Personal life

Louis Sauer was born to an Italian mother and a German father, both doctors in alternative medicine, with the family living modestly in Oak Park Illinois. Between the ages of ten and eighteen, Sauer would go on to work a variety of part-time jobs: as a window washer, corner newspaper boy, life guard, magazine distributor, shoe salesman, etc. After graduating from Oak Park and River Forest High School in 1946, Sauer began as a student in pre-medicine at DePaugh University, but moved out of the sciences to pursue an interest in art and photography, discovering a passion for architecture and modern design while studying at Moholy-Nagy's 'New Bauhaus' (named the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1952) from 1949 to 1953 in Chicago.

Sauer holds dual citizenship in the United States and Canada. He lives in Tasmania, Australia.[5]

Early years

At age 25, Sauer was conscripted into the US Army. After basic training at Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, Sauer joined the occupying army in Baumholder, Germany (December 1953 to June 1955) as Private First Class in the US Army Corps of Engineers. Sauer labelled himself conscientious objector, willing to carry out everything asked except to harm or kill, a deed which would get him in trouble. Nonetheless, he was able to complete his service and receive an honourable discharge.

While travelling in Italy on furlough, he met the Italian architect Gino Valle at his home in Udine, where Valle introduced Sauer to the ideas and work of the American architect Louis I Kahn, who practiced in Philadelphia. Sauer returned to the United States in 1955, where he obtained his first architectural employment under Jules Gregory in Lambertville NJ.

He then joined the 1956 summer session of Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in Venice at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura spending a formative period studying under architects such as Giuseppe Samonà, Jacob Bakema and Giancarlo De Carlo. Sauer remained another six months in Venice before returning to America to work for the Philadelphia Planning Department under Edmund Bacon on the Society Hill Redevelopment Plan. He met Louis I Kahn and entered Kahn's Master's Studio for post-graduate architectural studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, graduating in 1959.

After graduation, Sauer would work in a number of Philadelphia architect's offices. In 1961, Sauer and collaborator William Winchel would open their first office Winchel and Sauer, Architects, renaming it to Louis Sauer Associates the following year. Frustrated that his market-developer focused Philadelphia practice isolated him from working with economically disadvantaged social groups, he organized in 1968 a separate architectural and planning office with David Marshall and Steven Kerpen – Peoples Housing, Inc – in Topanga, California that focused on design and construction for economically and physically disadvantaged social groups. Sauer also taught part-time throughout this period, architecture and urban design at Philadelphia's Drexel Institute of Technology (1960–65) and the University of Pennsylvania (1965–79).

In spite of his contributions to the field of architecture, his discontent with his low fees which amounted to developer profits would eventually lead Sauer to close his Philadelphia office by June 1979. His decision to close his office took many fellow practitioners by surprise, giving up a successful private practice and moving on to a full-time academic career as Head of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University.[2]

Sauer felt strongly about the role of education for shaping future practitioners, believing that unless architectural schools learned to teach students how to design for increased building performance and to deal with society on realistic economic terms, society would simply deal architects out of the game.

Later years

Between 1989 and 1997, Sauer returned to professional design practice in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, as Director of Urban Design at Daniel Arbour and Associates, an urban planning office where fifty urban design master plans were carried out, including large-scale residential on green-field sites, structure plans for the redevelopment of brown-field sites, high-density mixed-use urban infill, and a master plan for structuring public and private sectors for a new town.

Projects
  • Penn's Landing Square, Society Hill, Philadelphia, which takes up an entire block and includes 118 homes.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
  • Eight constructed residential and commercial developments in Society Hill Historic District, Philadelphia.[12]
  • Four city blocks of townhouses in Baltimore, which introduced the first market-rate housing in the city's central business district and the Inner Harbour.[13][14]
  • Waterfront Redevelopment Plan for Baltimore's Fells Point Historic District and the design of its Main Square facing the Inner Harbour.
  • Bois-Franc, a new 8000-dwelling community on 202 hectares in the Saint-Laurent Borough of Montreal, Quebec.[15][16]
  • Newmarket, a speciality retail centre and noteworthy contribution to Edmund Bacon's transformation of the Philadelphia Society Hill landscape.[17][18]
  • Spring Pond (Painted Post, NY, 1966–8), 108 units of townhouses and apartments for the Corning Glass Works to promote new development in Corning, New York.[19][20][21][22][23]
  • Golf Course Island, 256 townhouses in the new town of Reston, Virginia.[24]

It has been a long time since the architecture of our day has accomplished as much for human liveability... Sauer's splendid design, at relatively moderate prices, should remove the last reasonable objections to the row-house idea. The houses appear wide on the inside, rather than narrow and vertical. And each has an unmistakably individual entrance, not just a kind of apartment door out on the street. I am almost tempted to call the Sauer townhouses a new breakthrough in townhouse design.[25]

  • Concourse Fountain Plaza at Yeatman's Cove (opened in 1976), a landscape water park with pools, fountains blasting large jets of water, concourse plaza and an apartment building and bridge (across an expressway) connecting Cincinnati's Central Activity District to the Ohio River.[26][27]

A towering snorkel... like a shower massage on steroids.[28]

Career

Academia

Sauer was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at Carnegie-Mellon University (1979–85).[29] His research focus was on the relationships between public and private development processes and their marketplaces, as well as how people use their residences and the cultural meanings of street landscapes.[30] Sauer was also a professor at the universities of Pennsylvania (1965–79), Colorado (Boulder; 1985–89) and a visiting professor at MIT, Yale and at numerous other US and Canadian universities. In 1984 Sauer was given the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Promoting Architectural Education. Although he retired from design practice in 1997, he continues to teach design studios at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), School of Architecture and mentoring PhD and Masters architecture students at the University of Melbourne.

Urban design

Sauer's works in urban legend includes a 'signature' new town in the Quebec development context designed in 1992–93 for 25,000 people adjacent to and northwest of Montreal. His vision and design was an urban plan, rather than a conventional suburban plan, for 8000 dwellings on 202 hectares at Bois-Franc in the borough of Saint-Laurent . His urban approach provided a strong singular image, with the streets and squares as social spaces, and allowed for integration of economic groups, building types and architectural styles. He used water as a major theme to provide contrast been the summer and winter city and social landscapes.

Research

Sauer was active in early initiatives to promote the inclusion of 'user needs' in design practice and education. He undertook his own research by conducting post-occupancy evaluations of his built work and worked with social scientists, such as John Zeisel, during his design programming. He received the first Design Fellowship Research Grant from the US National Endowment to the Arts to examine the relationships between building development processes and architectural design. He was active in the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) and was a director of its board. Sauer was also a review editor for the Journal of Architectural Research (JAR).

Awards

In 1973 Sauer was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and has received national, regional and local AIA awards, including two AIA Pennsylvania Chapter Silver Medals.

He won six Progressive Architecture Design Award's (PADA) for:

  • The Richard Cripps residence (Lambertville, New Jersey – PADA Jan 1963)
  • James Hamilton House (New Hope, Pennsylvania – PADA Jan 1964)
  • 11th and Waverly Town Houses (Philadelphia – PADA Jan 1964)
  • Pastorius Mews (Germantown, Philadelphia – PADA Jan 1965)
  • Head House Square East (Society Hill, Philadelphia – PADA 1969)
  • Queens Village (Philadelphia, with Cecil Baker, Architect – PADA Jan 1973)

Other award-winning projects include:

  • McClennen Residence[31]
  • Townhouses in Golf Course Island, Reston, Virginia
  • Urban design and 100 townhouses for the new Harbour Walk neighbourhood at Baltimore's Inner Harbor

For his teaching and academic work:

  • Award for Outstanding Achievement in Promoting Architectural Education, American Academy of Higher Education, Washington, D.C., 1984

Architectural style

According to a news article issued by Bloomberg, Sauer's style follows a modernist housing trend, taking inspiration from Moorish North African architecture and reinforced by a combination of "Ancient Greek, Medieval Italian, and early Native American models", spontaneous, disassociating himself with any premeditative architecture or "foreground architecture", stating how he found designing buildings "extremely challenging" due to a lack of any "preconceived form". Sauer created his models by starting on a single living quarter and scale it up. Creating building is a "discovery" process. In terms of interior design, the inside reflects the outside[2]

References
  1. Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. "The Work of Louis Sauer". Retrieved 2008-12-17.
  2. "The Architect Who Mastered Low-Rise, High-Density Housing - Bloomberg". Bloomberg News. 2023-03-08. Archived from the original on 2023-03-08. Retrieved 2023-03-08.
  3. "Sauer, Louis | Weitzman". 2023-03-08. Archived from the original on 2023-03-08. Retrieved 2023-03-08.
  4. Saggio, Antonino (1988). Un architetto americano Louis Sauer. Il progetto. p. xxx.
  5. "Architect louis sauer - the man with a plan - blog - cincinnatimodern.com". www.cincinnatimodern.com. Archived from the original on 2017-06-29.
  6. Garvin, Alexander (2002). The American City : What Works, What Doesn't. McGraw-Hill Professional. p. 265. ISBN 0-07-137367-5.
  7. 'Penns Landing Square,' Toshi-Jutaku: a Monthly Magazine of Urban Housing, Kajima Institute Publishing Co., May 1977, pp 43-45
  8. Penns Landing Square, 'Wohnhauser in Philadelphia, USA,' 10 x Wohnen Baumeister 12, Callwey Verlag, Munich, 1976, pp 1072-1075
  9. 'Urban-suburban: Penns Landing Square,' Housing: High-Rise vs. Low-Rise: Progressive Architecture, Reinhold Publishing Corp., NY, March 1976, pp 48-51
  10. 'A dynamic new partner,' House Beautiful, The Hearst Corporation, NY, June 1974, pp 74-77
  11. 'Penns Landing Square', 'Second Street Townhouses,' Low-Rise Housing in America, Process Architecture No. 14, Process Architecture Publishing Co., Tokyo, 1980, pp 38-47, 161
  12. 'Society Hill, Philadelphia,' Entwurf und Planning: Stadthauser, Paulhans, Peters, ed., Georg D.W. Callwey, Munich, 1979, pp 12, 46-47, 110. ISBN 3-7667-0473-7
  13. Sauer, Louis. 'Joining old and new: neighborhood planning and architecture for city revitalization,' Architecture and Behavior Vol. 5. No.4, Kaj Noschis, ed. (Ecole polytechnique federate Lausanne) p 357 372, Dec1989
  14. Mary Helen Lorenz. 'Inner Harbor West housing development,' 'Design Process, Problems and Social Science Research,' User Needs Research Practices of Designers, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Boston, 1979, pp 5-8, 24-25, 30-33, 35-44
  15. Sauer, Louis. 'The public open space urban design framework for Bois-Franc: a new town in Quebec,' Urban Design: Reshaping Our Cities, Anne Vernez Moudon & Wayne Attoe, eds. (College of Architecture & Urban Design, University of Washington: Seattle, p 172-178, 1995
  16. Sauer, Louis. 'Creating a Signature Town: the Urban Design of Bois Franc,' Plan Canada, (Canadian Institute of Planners: Arnprior, Ontario) p 22, 27, September 1994
  17. 'New Crystal Palace: Newmarket,' Progressive Architecture, Reinhold Publishing Corp., April 1976, pp 76-79
  18. Andrea 0. Dean. 'Evaluation: futuristic gesture in historic Society Hill,' AIA Journal, American Institute of Architects, Washington, D.C., June 1981, pp 42-49
  19. David Mackay. 'Spring Pond Apartments, Painted Post, NY,' Wohnungsbau in Wandel von der Addition zur Integration, Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart, 1977, pp 86-89. ISBN 3-7757-0112-5
  20. David Mackay. 'Spring Pond,' Multifamily Housing: From Aggregation to Integration, Thames & Hudson (London) 1977, pp 86-89
  21. 'Spring Pond Apartments,' USA 71, 1'Architecture d'Aujourd hui #157, Boulogne-Sur-Seine, France, Aug - Sept 1971, pp XL-XLI
  22. 'Corning, N.Y. Diversity of shapes and layouts in countryside apartments was achieved using repetitive buildings methods,' Architectural Forum, May 1971, pp 34-36
  23. Bettye Rose Connell. Behavioral Science research for Decision-making: the Processes of Programming and Evaluation; and, an Evaluative Case Study of Multi-family Housing, (an evaluation of Louis Sauer's design decisions for Painted Post NY), Master of Science Thesis, Graduate School of Cornell University, August 1975
  24. Paulhans Peters ed. 'Reston, Virginia, USA,' (Golf Course Island Townhouses), E+P: Hauser in Reihen: Mehrfamilienhauser, Kettenhauser, Hausergruppen, Verlag Geog D. W. Callwey, Munchen, 1973, pp 72-73, 132
  25. Von Eckardt, Wolf (1966). "The Row House Revival Is Going To Town-Not to Mention Country". Washington Post.
  26. 'Cincinnatus Concourse and Forum,' Architectural Record, McGraw-Hill Book Co., NY, June 1979, pp 107-112
  27. William Morgan. 'Cincinnati's Forum: A model Louisville should emulate,' The Urban Environment, The Courier-Journal, Cincinnati OH, 29 July 1979
  28. Mark Miller (June 2008). "10 June 2008 Cincinnati Concourse Fountain at Yeatman's Cove". Citykin Cincinnati Downtown Parents Promoting families in the city. Retrieved 23 December 2008.
  29. "School of Architecture History". Retrieved 2007-02-11.
  30. Sauer LE (1989). "Joining old and new: neighborhood planning and architecture for city revitalization" (PDF). Architecture and Behavior. 5 (4): 357–72.
  31. "Lous Sauer & Associates Architects Projects". William Penn Foundation. Retrieved 23 Dec 2008.
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