Louis Sauer

Sauer's works in urban legend includes a unique '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 [1]. 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.

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. There, he did 50 urban design master plans that included 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.

It took many of Sauer's fellow practitioners by surprise when he suddenly closed his office in Philadelphia in 1979, giving up a successful private practice and moving on to a full-time academic career as Head of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. Sauer felt strongly about the role of education for shaping future practitioners. He believed 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.

Sauer was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at Carnegie-Mellon University (1979–85). 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. 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 is teaching 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.

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

As principal of Louis Sauer Associates, Architects, Philadelphia, his work in the period 1961–79 focused on over 90 residential and urban design commissions in differing contexts, from central city urban infill to suburban and rural areas, and new town developments at Reston (Virginia), Columbia (Maryland) and Montreal (Quebec).

After graduation Sauer worked in a number of Philadelphia architect's offices and then in 1961 he started his own office with William Winchel as Winchel and Sauer, Architects and in 1962 as Louis Sauer Associates. Frustrated that his market-developer focused Philadelphia practice isolated him from working with economically disadvantaged social groups, in 1968 he organized 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. During this period Sauer also taught architecture and urban design part-time at Philadelphia's Drexel Institute of Technology (1960–65) and the University of Pennsylvania (1965–79).

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

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

At age 25 his life was temporarily interrupted by conscription 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. During this tour of duty he found himself in hot water after he declared himself a conscientious objector, willing to do everything asked except to harm or kill someone. Sauer was nonetheless able to complete his service and receive an honourable discharge.

Louis Sauer was born to an Italian mother and a German father. His parents were both doctors in alternative medicine, and the family lived modestly in Oak Park Illinois. Between the ages of 10 and 18 he held 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, and then discovered a passion for architecture and modern design while studying at the famous Moholy-Nagy's 'New Bauhaus' (named the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1952) from 1949 to 1953 in Chicago.

Louis Edward Sauer (born 1928) is an American architect and design theorist. In the 1960s, and 1970s, Sauer atypically worked with housing developers, producing low-rise high-density housing projects.