Louis Sauer
From Archiplanet
| Louis Sauer | |
| Title | FAIA |
| Born | 1928; Forest Park, Illinois, USA |
| Education | 1958-59 University of Pennsylvania, 1949-53 Illinois Institute of Technology |
| Firms | Louis Sauer, Architect |
| Notes | present address: louissauer@gmail.com; Melbourne 3004 Victoria, Australia |
Contents |
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LOUIS SAUER : SUMMARY OF PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Lou is an American/Canadian professor and retired practitioner of architecture and urban design with extensive knowledge about the public and private design of housing, its markets and developmental relationships.
RECOGNITION He was awarded a Fellowship in the American Institute of Architects and he became the first Design Fellow in the US National Endowment of the Arts. Lou’s designs have been published in more than 100 international books and magazines. In 1980 the ToshiJukatu Japanese Press published the monograph “The Work of Louis Sauer” and in 1988 the Officina Edizioni Italian book “Un Architetto Americano: Louis Sauer” by Antonino Saggio.
In spite of his non-typical clients, as expressed in Architectural Record about his work “How you can work with developers and actually like it”, Lou’s architecture and urban designs have received over 50 design awards and, in 1997, his Philadelphia McClennen House was designated a Modern Monument.
ACADEMIC He was Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at Carnegie-Mellon University, a professor at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Colorado and a visiting professor at M.I.T, Yale and numerous other US and Canadian universities. He initiated research in resident attitudes to neighbourhoods, single family parent’s housing and in the design of manufactured housing.
PHILADELPHIA In his Philadelphia office of Louis Sauer Associates, Architects, he designed a full range of residential building types and urban designs in differing contexts from central city urban infill, to suburban and rural areas.
BALTIMORE Among his work in Baltimore, Lou won the competitions for Baltimore’s Fells Point Historic District plan and the design of its Main Square, both of which are completed. As the winner of an international competition for the first private housing in Baltimore’s Inner Harbour, he did the urban design for the City’s new Harbour Walk neighbourhood and is the architect for its constructed housing.
MONTREAL He conceived the physical development plan for a new 8,000 dwelling community adjacent to Montreal on 202 ha. He was selected by the City of Montreal’s Planning and Development Minister to be a member of its Jacques Viger Commission to advise the City on the design quality of development proposals.
DUBAI & EUROPE In Dubai, U.A.E., as a design competition juror for the UN Development Program, he selected architects for a Conference/Cultural Centre and a Children’s Museum. For the US Agency for International Development, he advised the government of Lebanon on physical design policies for developing public housing and, in Portugal, Lou evaluated Lisbon’s public housing design and the urban renewal program in Oporto’s historic district. For the US Information Service, he was a participant in the US-Soviet mission to Moscow for the transfer of housing knowledge.
MELBOURNE In his retirement, Lou moved to Australia in 2000. Presently he is the Chair of the Design Advisory Panel for the Mornington Peninsula Shire and is a visiting professor at RMIT. In Mt. Eliza, Lou was the Chair of the Ranelagh Estate Conservation Management Plan Group and Director of the Ranelagh Club. In Frankston he initiated its Design Review Panel and the Friends of the Frankston Reservoir, he was the President of the Friends of Upper Sweetwater Creek and the Secretary of the Friends of Frankston.
Some things written about Louis Sauer
Jim Morgan, from “An essay on the work of Louis Sauer,”
Toshi-Jutaku January 1980
“Although there are not many American architects like Louis Sauer, he is a very American architect nonetheless. Forceful in his beliefs, Louis Sauer strikes one, in spite of that, as a warm and personable man who takes more pride in his family than he does in his work, His working values seem to come directly from his American heritage: a commitment to pragmatic action, to building rather than talking about building; commitment to giving the people who use his buildings maximum freedom of choice in their daily lives; commitment to the unpredictable adventures of a pluralistic, free-wheeling capitalist society and commitment to serving the underprivileged members of that society as well.”
Contemporary Architects, edited by Muriel Emanuel; St. Martin's
Press, New York. New York (1980).
Louis Sauer is a no-nonsense, user-oriented architect from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His firm has been quite prolific, and they have completed many fine buildings that have been conservative, but not conventional, and completely up-to-date, without being trendy. Sauer himself is a pragmatist, greatly aware of the importance of communication with the client, and sensitive to issues far broader than merely architectural design. Still, his buildings are neatly handsome and often slick. He has frequently proposed unique and surprisingly successful solutions to many difficult problems facing contemporary architects. He has readily accepted the challenges of some of the toughest building programs in America, and his portfolio includes an impressive number of successful public housing projects and in-fill urban designs.
In the Society Hill area of Philadelphia, Sauer has completed many six to 50 unit attached house complexes that have blended easily with the existing street patterns without compromising modernity or design freshness. By maintaining certain volumetric dimensions but distorting others, Sauer's houses are unusual and exciting in and of themselves, without damaging or significantly altering the local environmental character….
…Sauer has also completed a variety of public housing projects that are worthy of commendation. Two developments near New Haven, Connecticut, and several near Philadelphia, have proven Sauer to be capable of handling the hardest assignments. In all, he made snappy structures with easily identifiable individual units, and surprising variation for low-income developments. In Connecticut be conducted interviews with future occupants to discover changes they would like to implement, and he revised-the floor plan accordingly, without changing the size or overall cost of the housing.
Sauer is a strong, energetic, and forceful designer who is impressed by action, not words. He has made a strong commitment to keep architecture in close touch with the people it serves, and he has stayed a bit removed from the polemical debates of architecture, in order to be in the thick of its production.
Wolf Von Eckardt, part from The Washington Post, 24 July 1966
”It has been a long time since the architecture of our day has accomplished as much for human liveability as the new townhouses by the architect – Louis Sauer. You’ll find here in Reston (Virginia) not just exciting and dramatic shapes to serve the noble art of architecture, but shapes that serve the joys of being at home. I am almost tempted to call the Sauer town houses a new breakthrough in town house design.”
Jim Morgan, part from “How you can work with developers and
actually like it”, Architectural Record, April 1973
“It is Lou Sauer's belief that ultimately the architect's unique and necessary contribution to the development housing process is a "sense of place." … But Sauer's goal goes beyond that. He seeks to develop, through the use of his "design strategy," a means for producing housing environments that will reinforce people's aesthetic identity and values, not ignore them as so much of contemporary architecture does....
"I want to do outstanding architecture within the constraints of the normal world," says Lou Sauer, "and the developer is the closest approximation to that reality I know." The goal, as he sees it, is to get beyond "architected" architecture toward buildings that will respond readily to social and cultural changes whatever they may be. In a time when reactionary forces seem to be so strong, such striving toward a democratic, humanistic architecture is well worth notice.”
