Louis Sauer

Louis Edward Sauer (born 1928) is a Canadian-American architect and design theorist of dual American and Canadian nationality, known for his role in the renewal in Society Hill, Philadelphia and his contributions to low-rise, high-density housing. Sauer worked with housing developers to produce low-rise high-density housing projects throughout the 1960s and 70s.^[2][3]

During his tenure as principal of Louis Sauer Associates, Architects located in

Sauer's designs for the David Buten House (Philadelphia) and Pastorius Mews[4] 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.^[5]

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

Sauer lives in Tasmania, Australia.^[6]

Early years

At age 25, Sauer was conscripted into the US Army. Following basic training at

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.^[5]

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.^[5][8]

Projects

• Society Hill, Philadelphia, occupying an entire block and includes 118 homes.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14]}
• Eight constructed residential and commercial developments in Society Hill Historic District, Philadelphia.[15]
• 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.^[16][17]
• 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.^[18][19]
• Newmarket, a speciality retail centre and noteworthy contribution to Edmund Bacon's transformation of the Philadelphia Society Hill landscape.^[20][21]
• 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.^{[22][23][24][25][26]}
• Golf Course Island, 256 townhouses in the new town of Reston, Virginia.^[27]

"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."^[28]

• 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.^[29][30]

"A towering snorkel... like a shower massage on steroids."^[31]

Role is Society Hill

Sauer is mentioned among other architects, such as Frank Weiss, Romaldo Giurgola, De Roy Mark, John Bower and John Collins, in Saggio's An American Architect as the most important figure behind the building design for the renewal of Society Hill owing to the number of projects completed, the high architectural and urban quality of the buildings, and the originality of his design solutions.

Between 1957 and 1958, prior to finishing his Master's degree under the mentorship of Louis Kahn, Sauer was employed at the Philadelphia Planning Commission. During this time, he played a key role in developing the Society Hill regeneration plan, which aimed to secure federal funding for the initiation of the redevelopment process. Sauer's responsibilities encompassed documenting the architectural features of chosen historic structures, participating in decisions regarding restoration, renewal, or demolition and reconstruction, and creating alternative illustrative site plans for urban areas designated for both low-rise and high-rise construction.

Regarding this third initiative, the young Sauer conceptualized the layout for the present location of the Society Hill Towers. His design involved the blueprints for three high-rise buildings, resembling the Pei towers that stand there today. The comprehensive redevelopment plan was supervised by Willo von Moltke within the Philadelphia Planning Department and drafted by the office of Andrade Wright and Amenta, consultants to the Planning department. Despite his involvement in the project, Sauer faced challenges in his relationship with public administration. His impatience with the centralizing institutional structures, as well as the political and "public relations" aspects of the Planning Department directed by Bacon, played a role in shaping Sauer and Bacon's dynamic.

From 1962 to 1963, Sauer conducted a thorough door-to-door survey to assess the execution of a redevelopment plan in the Morton Urban Renewal neighborhood. Serving as a "street architect" for the city's Redevelopment Authority, he not only fulfilled official duties but also provided free consultancy to the residents. It was during this timeframe that Sauer recognized the challenges associated with urban renewal initiatives. Administrators needed to navigate between explicit public commitments to address social issues in deteriorating neighborhoods and acknowledging the market's rules, where investors directly intervene to maximize profits for effectiveness.^[5]

Career

Academia

Sauer was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at

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

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)^[when?]^{[citation needed]}.

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

• 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^[34]
• 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