The Work of Louis Sauer -- by Jim Morgan



| |[pic] |

| |The Work of Louis Sauer |

| |Extract by Jim Morgan, AIA (1980) Toshi-Jutaku: Monthly Magazine of Urban Housing 8001, Kajima |

| |Institute Publishing Co (Tokyo), January 1980, pp 68-69, 111-112 |

|[pic] |SAUER'S EARLY CAREER |

|Cripps House, 1962 |HOW LOUIS SAUER WORKS WITH DEVELOPERS |

| |THREE MAJOR ISSUES IN MARKET-RATE HOUSING |

|[pic] |LOUIS SAUER AND GOVERNMENT- ASSISTED HOUSING |

|Hamilton House, 1962 |FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR LOUIS SAUER |

| |Although there are not many American architects like Louis Sauer, he is a very American architect |

|[pic] |nonetheless. Forceful in his beliefs, Louis Sauer strikes one, in spite of that, as a warm and |

|Waverly Court I, 1963 |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 |

|[pic] |rather than talking about building; commitment to giving the people who use his buildings maximum |

|Buten House, 1962 |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 |

|[pic] |members of that society as well. |

|Buten House, 1962 |Louis Sauer is always ready to consider another person's opinion of his work, always ready to |

| |include their input into his design thinking. Like John Turner and others who advocate the user's |

|[pic] |role in providing his own shelter, Sauer has been enthusiastically involved in opening up the |

|Socity Hill, Philadelphia |process of design to the maximum number of participants. And yet, like other architects of his |

| |generation, he cares a great deal about the product of the design process, about the quality of |

| |the built environment--especially about adding new construction into an existing context. |

| |He does not see himself primarily as an intellectual and is always ready to argue against |

| |architecture based on European and academic influences. He sees the work of people like Richard |

| |Meier, for instance, as largely irrelevant to American society. For Sauer, houses derived from |

| |ideological or quasi-historical references represent a constriction of the choices available to |

| |whose who occupy them. |

| |As of September 1979, Louis Sauer has turned the work of his Philadelphia office over to others |

| |and has begun a new career as Head of the Department of Architecture at Carnegie-Mellon University|

| |in Pittsburgh. Not everyone there, apparently, is happy to have as leader an architect who has |

| |spent most of his professional life working with developers. But Louis Sauer isn't daunted by |

| |that. He feels very strongly that unless architects learn to deal with society on realistic terms,|

| |society will simply deal architects out of the game. And he intends to get that point across to |

| |his students right from the start. |

| |Louis Sauer was born in 1928 and grew up in Oak Park, Illinois. Frank Lloyd Wright's houses were |

| |everywhere and Sauer remembers going to high school parties at Unity Temple. But he had no |

| |intention of following in Wright's footsteps at that time. After high school, young Sauer spent |

| |three years in pre-medical training. Then something inexplicable happened. He decided he would |

| |rather be a painter. |

| |Born of Italian and German stock, Louis Saner is at once passionate and dedicated to order. So |

| |when his deep well of humanity surged up and swept away the orderly progress toward becoming a |

| |doctor, he began a vigorous odyssey through the arts: from painting to sculpture to photography. |

| |For awhile, even an interest in modern dance. But eventually he settled on architecture and |

| |product design, graduating in 1953 from Moholy-Nagy's Institute of Design, recently merged with |

| |Illinois Institute of Technology. After a tour of military duty in Europe, Sauer entered the |

| |University of Pennsylvania in order to, like so many other important American architects of our |

| |time, draw inspiration from the teaching of Louis I. Kahn. He graduated with a Master's Degree in |

| |Architecture in 1959. |

| |SAUER'S EARLY CAREER |

| |If you study the Design Awards issues of Progressive Architecture in the early 60's, you will |

| |conclude that Louis Sauer was beginning, as have other talented architects, by designing romantic,|

| |rambling houses-in-the-woods in the beautiful Delaware River valley above Philadelphia. In 1963 it|

| |was the thoroughly-articulated Cripps residence and then in 1964, the Hamilton house lovingly |

| |integrated into the collpased shell of an old mill. But what is not so well known is that at same |

| |time that he was busy during the evenings designing these country houses, Sauer was spending his |

| |days working for the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. For two-and-a-half years he was out on |

| |the street as full-time liaison with the disenfranchised, watching the promise of urban renewal |

| |being perverted by the political elite. It was during this period, the early 60's, that Louis |

| |Sauer began doing advocacy work among the poor. Thus, the two characteristics that distinguish his|

| |career--design excellence and pragmatic involvement in society--began at the same time. |

| |The urban interest does soon appear in his work because the same issue of Progressive Architecture|

| |that recognized the Hamilton house also gave a First Design Award to his project for Waverly |

| |Court. This was the first of what now seem to be dozens of tight and intriguing row-house projects|

| |that Sauer has done for the area around Society Hill, Philadelphia. Walking in that neighborhood, |

| |today, one is seldom out of sight of a Sauer building. In some cases he has designed every |

| |building on the block! |

| |One of the houses done early in Sauer's career which deserves special comment is the Buten |

| |residence, published in Progressive Architecture for August, 1964. Two tiny back-to-back rowhouses|

| |were gutted and the facades retained. The parallel bearing walls are about fourteen feel apart. |

| |Within that shell, Louis Sauer created a magic place. At the basement level, a living room and |

| |dining room/kitchen were built on either side of a 14-foot by l1-foot garden and connected by a |

| |glass-walled passage. Above the living room, three floors, each with a bedroom or study, fill out |

| |the ancient brick facade. At the other end, over the kitchen, there is a separate apartment, also |

| |three stories tall. |

| |But it is the garden which transformed the house into a sublime living experience. The living room|

| |is separated from it by a single sheet of glass, thus, making the planting bed inside the living |

| |room seem truly contiguous to the garden. Opposite, the dining room window heads are dropped |

| |because the floor level is lower--the perspective effect makes the garden seem even longer. A |

| |single dogwood tree, brick paving and low planting create an intimacy of scale within this |

| |seemingly enormous space that is astounding. Ties to Japanese tradition that are apparent here |

| |result from Sauer's own study of that culture. |

| |Interestingly enough, however, it is not the esthetic distinction of the Buten house which makes |

| |it significant to Louis Sauer's later work. Rather, it was this design which served as a test of |

| |the system which Sauer was developing at the same time for large-scale housing projects. The |

| |twelve or fourteen-foot wide living unit, reproduced in all directions as part of a grid, is the |

| |conceptual heart of most of the housing designs which Sauer has done. Thus, the Buten residence is|

| |worth extremely close study because it serves so clearly as the paradigm for what can be |

| |accomplished in a limited building site. With this in mind, the essay will first examine the work |

| |that Sauer has done with market-rate housing developers and will then look at the public sector |

| |housing, much of which uses the same building system. |

| |HOW LOUIS SAUER WORKS WITH DEVELOPERS |

| |The first and probably most important difference between Louis Sauer and most other architects who|

| |work for housing developers is that he never worry about compromising "architecture" as he |

| |responds to the developer's needs. Because of his early recognition by magazines and professional |

| |organizations as a talented designer, he has been free to explore what he calls "the edges between|

| |architecture and the rest of society." For him, working with developers was one of the best ways |

| |to learn about those areas with which architecture interacts--finance and public policy--but which|

| |to so many architects are alien territory. |

| |He quickly realized that the architect's traditional concerns--documented programming, |

| |studio-oriented design, elegant detailing---were not relevant either to the developer nor to the |

| |market the developer wished to serve. It is not so much that Sauer abandoned these concerns as |

| |that he set them aside while working with developers. Such flexibility would not come easily to |

| |architects who have an ideologically-based design approach but for Louis Sauer, who approaches |

| |each design problem on its own terms, there is no problem. |

| |In other words, the context in which the developer is working shapes Sauer's design approach. He |

| |accepts his role as a professional serving a client and strives to understand the client's needs |

| |without making judgements about their meaning. Yet he pursues the idea of an "Ameriean |

| |architecture" with all his might. Since Sauer endorses the idea that architecture cannot exist |

| |outside of its social, political and economic context, and also that the developer is the |

| |motivating force behind housing construction in the American free market system, it is easy to see|

| |why he feels committed to the real estate development process. |

| |The result is that Sauer has always responded to the pride that professional developers take in |

| |their projects. Yet, even that is not as simple as it sounds. Developers may have a personal |

| |commitment to quality but often their criteria are different from an architect's standards. For |

| |instance, one developer may take pride in offering large apartments. Another may get pleasure from|

| |beautifully landscaped grounds. Still another may believe in having every car parked so close to |

| |the unit that the tenant can see it from his front door. |

| |It is Sauer's contention that for the architect to have any influence with the developers at all, |

| |he must work to understand the process and values of the building industry and move with them. |

| |Yet, he does not see that collaboration as "selling out". Rather he uses the image of Ju-jitsu: |

| |you move with the force applied in order to control it. Thus, Sauer sees himself as using the |

| |developer's own techniques with such expertise that he can create changes that suit his own |

| |architectural goals while still serving the client's needs. |

| |Louis Sauer sees himself as an architect who has wanted to build, not just design paper schemes. |

| |Since developers also want to build -- and often build over and over again their importance to |

|[pic] |Sauer is again confirmed. Yet, Sauer will not work for just any person who calls himself a |

|Pastorius Mews, 1964 |developer. Some painful false starts in the early 60's have convinced him that unless the |

| |developer meets certain criteria that Sauer has identified since then, it is best not to take the |

|[pic] |job. That is not exactly the attitude of someone after all the work he can get! |

|Golf Course Island, 1965 |The first of his criteria is that the developer be experienced. There are two reasons for that: |

| |First, if the developer has produced a housing complex that Sauer can visit, many of the ideas |

|[pic] |which are important to the developer will be readily apparent to him; the architect will then have|

|Spring Pond Apartments, 1966 |a stronger sense of the "program" than he could gain from the standard programming process. |

| |Second, Louis Sauer is not interested in training people to be developers; even though he |

|[pic] |understands after all these years, the developer's work better than many of his clients, he |

|Governor's Grove, 1969 |steadfastly refuses to assume that role or to mix it with the role of architect. When a developer |

| |who is not adequately experienced, in Sauer's opinion, insists upon working with him, he raises |

|[pic] |the fee to compensate for the extra time and risk that will be required. |

|Harmony House, 1967 |His second rule is that the developer must have the capacity to complete the job, which translates|

| |to "Financial Stability". That is, obviously, usually a strength that comes with a developer who |

|[pic] |is experienced. But not always: often an organization which is making large profits in a business |

|Canterbury Gardens, 1967 |related to housing will decide to put some of their excess funds into development and thereby earn|

| |even more. Because they are newcomers to the field, Sauer stays away from them. And he is right. |

|[pic] |In the last decade, several huge aerospace corporations entered the mass housing development |

|Warburton Houses, 1970 |business only to find that putting a man on the moon requires totally different skills from |

| |putting a house on the earth! |

|[pic] |Third, Louis Sauer insists that the developer have a sophisticated understanding of the market he |

|Orchard Mews, 1974 |is seeking to enter. From Sauer's point-of-view, unless the developer knows precisely the desires |

| |of those for whom he intends to provide housing, the project will not be a financial success. In |

|[pic] |the American market, where choice is expected, a housing development which has inappropriate |

|Seascape, 1972 |character or location will take so long to fill up with occupants that the developer is likely to |

| |suffer significant financial loss if not bankruptcy. |

|[pic] |The fourth criteria for Sauer is that his developer-client be aware of the neighborhood in which |

|Penn's Landing Square, 1969 |the project will be located. As is clear from the photographs included in this issue, Sauer's |

| |buildings always fit well into their environment and at the same time convey a "sense of place". |

|[pic] |These characteristics cannot be captured by an architect, in Sauer's opinion, if the developer |

|Lombard Condos, 1977 |himself has not perceived the character and potential of the area surrounding the new housing. |

| |While it may indeed be the architect's task, as Sauer sees it, to create the design character that|

| |both blends and maintains its own quality, nothing significant can be accomplished without the |

| |developer's agreement. And it certainly won't happen if he doesn't want it. |

| |THREE MAJOR ISSUES IN MARKET-RATE HOUSING |

| |In working as part of the market-rate housing industry (as distinct from government-assisted |

| |housing), Louis Sauer points to three main topics that, for him, clarify the process: the |

| |architect's influence on the developer; the nature of industrialized building in America; and, |

| |already mentioned, the marketing process. |

| |One reason why many American architects have avoided working with developers is that they have |

| |much less influence and control than in institutional work such as schools, churches and corporate|

| |buildings. But where most architects complain that the developer pushes them around too much, |

| |Louis Sauer avoids those who don't know enough to be clear about their intentions. That is what he|

| |means by not wanting developer-clients who are inexperienced. "Since you know from the start that |

| |profit is why the work is being done," says Sauer, "it makes things much easier if the developer |

| |knows exactly how he intends to operate." |

| |Where institutional architects like Philip Johnson and I. M. Pei seek to control their clients' |

| |response to the design problem by "protecting their interests", in market-oriented design the |

| |situation is just the opposite. The client not only doesn't need protection but is the one who |

| |knows what will satisfy his market and how to do it. Thus, there is apparently much less "freedom"|

| |for the architect. |

| |In spite of putting himself into situations which most other architects avoid, Sauer has continued|

| |to produce buildings that have won critical acclaim and he has, in some neighborhoods, such as |

| |Society Hill in Philadelphia, designed so many of the new buildings that have been built that it |

| |looks as though the whole composition was planned. |

| |Louis Sauer understands that he gains influence with the developer as he reduces the developer's |

| |risk. To the extent that developers know that Sauer's designs are easily built and marketed, they |

| |trust him and give him the opportunity to pursue the architectural goals that he feels are |

| |appropriate. |

| |A flexible design approach is probably the primary means by which Sauer maximizes his influence |

| |over the developer. For instance, he never uses the standard approach to programming with his |

| |developer-clients. Where institutional clients are ready to spend months finding out what each |

| |employee needs and wants in his office, developers tend to be men of few words, more interested in|

| |immediate action than a lot of talk. Therefore, Sauer uses a series of design schemes as the |

| |programming technique, He shows the developer many ways to site the buildings and, by listening |

| |carefully to the responses, soon knows what is wanted. The same goes for apartment layouts and |

| |sizes, for building forms and materials. |

| |It is not as random and open-ended a process as it may seem. After years of working with |

| |developers, Sauer knows ahead of time the likely response of his new client and focuses his |

| |drawings accordingly. Even so, by today's theories of practice, it is an approach that most |

| |architects would hesitate to use. Nonetheless, it is important, says Sauer, to give the developer |

| |an opportunity to exercise his own sense of design. By involving the client in the design process,|

| |Sauer finds that the gains in influence over later decisions are worth whatever ego satisfaction |

| |is lost. And it is worth-while to remember at this point that Louis Sauer does not need to be told|

| |by his clients that he is a good designer. |

| |What Sauer gains from this free-wheeling approach to design is the opportunity to influence how |

| |the developer will spend his construction budget. Traditionally, architects who work for |

| |developers have very little to say about how the finished product will look. That's why so many |

| |American development housing projects look as though they had no architect at all. |

| |Louis Sauer, therefore, concentrates on making the developer aware of the marketing advantages of |

| |handsome materials, generous windows and above all, complete landscaping. After all, Sauer |

| |recognizes that to the developer, the architect is needed primarily to create the atmosphere for |

| |marketing as the developer intends to do it. That means the architect works basically on site |

| |planning and facade design. Apartment layout, which represents the needs and desires of the |

| |identified market, is a matter over which the developer usually retains total control. |

| |Louis Sauer dealt with this concept early in his practice by coming up with a site/building/unit |

| |system that he has used in differing forms many times since. The first application, Pastorius |

| |Mews, was a tight urban site. Based on his scheme for the Buten residence, whose small-scaled |

| |richness has already been discussed, Sauer placed a twelve-foot wide grid on his downtown |

| |Philadelphia site. Then, he imposed a set of parallel-walled building shells on that inside of |

| |which a variety of interior arrangements were possible. Although that design was never built, it |

| |gave him a format that has since worked well on a variety of sites. The grid is twelve feet wide |

| |for low-income housing and fourteen feet wide for moderate and upper income units. The module |

| |works well with available building materials and permits the various trades to move from one house|

| |to the next knowing exactly what they will find. |

| |At first, the system was used only on high-density urban land (including the willing borough |

| |project for Levitt). Ironically, the first built example is Golf Course Island at Reston, |

| |Virginia--suburban density housing. Here, because of the semi-rural context and of parking |

| |requirements, Sauer abandoned the grid site plan and revised the system into a series of three |

| |basic foundation plans, each of which offer a slightly different first floor plan. Then, there are|

| |three second floor plans, each of which fit any of the second floor plans. Thus, a considerable |

| |variety is possible and more important, a wide range of purchase prices. |

| |Sauer learned a number of other things on the Reston project. On his own, he visited several |

| |nearby housing developments built for the same market as he was designing for. The comparability |

| |studies that resulted gave him a thorough understanding of the market that his client, Robert E. |

| |Simon, was aiming for. He also did cost-per-square foot studies of the client's earlier |

| |construction and sales efforts that enabled him to seek out esthetic opportunities based on the |

| |construction cost savings that his site/building/unit system offers. Interestingly enough, it was |

| |also at Reston that Sauer realized he was imposing architectural form on people who had different |

| |values from his own. That is when he began the behavioral studies, discussed in the following |

| |section, that have shaped his work ever since. |

| |Two projects which followed, Spring Pond in Corning, N. Y. and Governor's Grove in Wesleyan, |

| |Connecticut, were designed on the same system, each modified to suit the special needs of site and|

| |market. Spring Pond mixes small rental townhouses and flats, combining them into repeated groups |

| |of units which form several different configurations around intimate courtyards. For the first |

| |time, Sauer did his own landscaping design, including roads and parking, as part of his system. |

| |The Connecticut project is upper-income condominium units on a sloping site. This time the unit |

| |combinations are based on a fourteen by fourteen-foot module that offers seven floor plans in four|

| |different building configurations, depending on the topography. |

| |Sauer has since then simplified his system with a four-plex plan--four units backing up to each |

| |other--that has been used several times, including Regency Square, Cincinnati and Oak Hill |

| |Estates, Philadelphia. By this time, about 1970, Louis Sauer's reputation as a market-rate housing|

| |architect was at such a level that he had to begin to turn away developers. It was then that he |

| |decided to take the "problem-site" jobs rather than those with high budgets for which "high-style"|

| |facades were sought. |

| |It is appropriate here to say that none of Sauer's projects look like any of the others because he|

| |designs for a particular site context and market image in each case. Unlike the New York Five, who|

| |pursue a consistent esthetic course from one house to the next, no matter what changes in context |

| |occur, Sauer's process is constant but the visual results differ--they always reflect the specific|

| |context of the work. Thus, his concept of industrialized building does not include the idea, so |

| |popular with the Five and their followers, that the building should look "industrial". Most |

| |Americans agree with Sauer that a machine and a house are quite different objects indeed. |

| |Louis Sauer's work, for the first six years of his practice, fell entirely into the market-rate |

| |category. During that period, after doing several urban housing projects that did not get built |

| |and one suburban one (North Crossing, Willow Grove, Pennsylvania) that was built and proved a |

| |successful investment, he began to understand the developer's preoccupation with marketing. By |

| |mastering that discipline he could foresee in his designs the developer's needs and, thus, offer a|

| |supportive service that few other architects do. |

| |One notable exception is Fisher-Friedman of San Francisco who also do a great deal of developer |

| |housing design. But where Sauer's designs often deal with tight and complicated urban sites, |

| |Fisher-Friedman's usually are on previously-undeveloped properties where lower densities can be |

| |accomodated. And where Sauer's projects respond to subtle differences in the neighborhood context,|

| |Fisher-Friedman's projects have a similar character that expresses the more homogeneous housing |

| |market of rapidly growing California. |

| |LOUIS SAUER AND GOVERNMENT- ASSISTED HOUSING |

| |Louis Sauer's first government-assisted housing work was designed in 1967-8 for two separate sites|

| |in the same New Haven, Connecticut neighborhood. Both projects were for low-lncome black families |

| |with children, Americans who, without the intervention of government in housing, would never have |

| |a chance for decent living quarters. |

| |Since this work came to him after half-a-dozen years of working with developers on market-rate |

| |housing, he quickly realized that no one, including the New Haven Redevelopment Agency (NHRA) |

| |which was in charge, knew who the tenants would be. Sauer used a variation of his |

| |site/building/unit system to place 22 units on the first site, known as Harmony House, and 34 |

| |units on the second, Canterbury Gardens. |

| |But as he was designing the apartment plans themselves, based on a standard plan of NHRA, he |

| |became convinced that the layout was not workable for the families who would occupy them. So he |

| |made an informal but detailed survey of six families who might be prospective tenants. He |

| |discovered that instead of kitchens on the street and living rooms in the back on a private yard |

| |(an arrangement that works well for middle-class families), everyone of these families wanted it |

| |reversed. Reluctantly, the NHRA allowed him to make that revision. A great deal has been written |

| |since about Sauer's pioneering act of behavioral research in this case. |

| |As part of a vigorous professional interest in the science of behavioral psychology that began to |

| |emerge in the late 60's, Louis Sauer has continued to follow up on the New Haven projects and has |

| |used the same interview-research process on several subsequent government-assisted projects. He |

| |believes that if no one else will do it, then the architect must be the user-needs advocate. His |

| |ease at welcoming the input of others into the design process (also mentioned earlier as part of |

| |his work with developers) distinguishes Sauer from almost every other American architect. Perhaps |

| |the only other one to actively use behavioral studies is Herb MeLaughlin of San Francisco. His |

| |applications have been mainly institutional and commercial design projects, however. |

| |Louis Sauer's interest in learning from others to improve his design skills began with the first |

| |house he designed. The clients had requested a colonial design; he had designed a modern one, in |

| |hopes of "educating" them. After it was built he realized that he had imposed his own |

| |point-of-view and vowed never to do it again if he could help it. |

| |For an architect, he controls his "utopian" impulses well. Rather than use design to "improve" the|

| |existing world (a presumption of which most architects are guilty at one time or another) or |

| |create a "new society", Sauer follows the precepts of Robert Venturi, his Philadelphia |

| |contemporary, in attempting to find what is good with things as they are. But unlike Venturi, who |

| |is apt to then produce an architectural caricature of what he finds, Sauer attempts to make forms |

| |with which his users will be totally comfortable. |

| |Sauer's concerns with user-needs have paid definite dividends. In a new government publication, |

| |"Residents' Satisfaction in HUD-Assisted Housing Design and Management (1979)", a survey found |

| |that the occupants of Sauer's Warburton houses in Yonkers, N. Y. expressed the highest level of |

| |enthusiasm for their buildings. The project combines a high-rise tower with a group of 21 low-rise|

| |apartments based on Sauer's site/building/unit system, all with easy access to a linear interior |

| |court. |

| |Orchard Mews in Baltimore is one of these, a Sauer project done under the sponsorship of the |

| |Baltimore municipal government. It is a city block of urban renewal land that has returned to |

| |neighborhood life. Built around a church that has still to be renovated, Orchard Mews consists of |

| |101 subsidized rental houses grouped around carefully-landscaped public areas. The private outdoor|

| |spaces that front each house include the entrance stairs for which Baltimore rowhouses are famous.|

| |In fact, given their small scale, it is not easy to distinguish the new 12-foot wide houses Sauer |

| |has designed from the existing indigenous ones across the street. For Sauer, the project is an |

| |application of behavioral science exploring issues of identity and territoriality as they affect |

| |people living in high-density housing. A series of post-occupancy studies will be done to examine |

| |the effectiveness of Sauer's design assumptions. |

| |Sauer generally has a positive reaction toward non-market sector housing. He feels that the |

| |architect has much more freedom to innovate and to intervene on behalf of the potential users than|

| |in market-rate housing. But then he sees that the architect's responsibility to provide good |

| |quality units is also greater since poor people have far less choice in how they live than do |

| |those who can afford private-sector housing. |

| |Among Louis Sauer's recent work, there are several examples illustrating the sophistication with |

| |which he now approaches high-density housing design. Even when the project is not in a city, there|

| |is a distinctly urban quality about the result. For instance, Seascape is a group of fourteen |

| |detached houses on a city block in the Atlantic Ocean beach resort of Avalon, New Jersey. The |

| |houses surround a pool and tennis court that the house owners hold in common. Sauer wondered how |

| |to avoid the awkward sideyards that fall on both sides of detached houses set on narrow lots. So |

| |he devised a "zero lot line" concept that satisfies the town's zoning code and gives each house |

| |control over one double-width sideyard. The wall of the house that is on the lot line has no |

| |windows while the opposite side opens onto what is a private garden. It is an idea that can be |

| |traced back to Sauer's early site/building/unit system. |

| |Two recent low-rise projects in Society Hill, Philadelphia, among the many there designed by Louis|

| |Sauer, also merit special comment. Penn's Landing Square II is a full city block complex that |

| |faces the Delaware River to the east and I. M. Pei's Society Hill Towers to the north. In such a |

| |large-scale context, where houses must assume monumental proportions in order to be significant in|

| |the landscape, Sauer made use of architectural devices that go back to the famous curved rows of |

| |houses in Bath, England. Although the Philadelphia facades are devoid of ornament, two classical |

| |themes can be seen: first, two-story tall columns march along as the framework into which all |

| |windows and other voids are incorporated; second, above the columns, a large entablature formed by|

| |the attics of the joined houses creates a flat panel that is definitely in scale with its |

| |surroundings. |

| |But that facade is quite different from the private side of the building (a distinction which |

| |Sauer has made since his earliest houses). In plan, Penn's Landing Square is an example of the |

| |high-density possibilities of Sauer's site/building/unit system. On less than two acres, 118 units|

| |have been arranged so that every house has an exposure at both ends. A tight walkway edged by two |

| |and three-story facades of modest scale winds its way past luxuriant planting. It feels |

| |Scandinavian in spirit. There is also a definite three-dimensional quality to the composition, so |

| |that at one point the interior street is a floor or two above the communal swimming pool. From a |

| |monumental facade, where that suits the context, to an intimate sequence of courtyards and |

| |passages, Penn's Landing Square has a "sense of place" that is remarkable. |

| |Louis Sauer himself is less comfortable in such an intense environment than in the traditional |

| |Philadelphia streetscape. Although almost every street in Society Hill has a house or building |

| |that he has designed, his own favorite is the Lombard Street Condominiums. Located just a few |

| |doors from his earlier McClennan house (which is itself an excellent illustration of Sauer's |

| |distinction between public and private facades), this group of eight duplex rowhouses establish a |

| |rhythm reminiscent of a London street. Because each unit is a maisonette above another maisonette,|

| |four floors total, the scale is larger than usual for a Philadelphia street. But because this |

| |group ends the street at the riverfront, they have a solid brick element rising from the sidewalk |

| |that alternates with a set-back section culminating in one, sometimes two, greenhouses at the top.|

| |Sauer notes with pleasure that when, halfway through construction, the developer decided to offer |

| |rooftop terraces to his potential buyers, the upper greenhouses were easily added. Not everyone |

| |chose to add the upper greenhouse and that adds an unexpected variety to the composition. |

| |FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR LOUIS SAUER |

| |Sauer's decision to shift his focus from being primarily an architect to being primarily an |

| |academic administrator was not made in a vacuum. Sauer taught most of the 60's, first at Drexel |

| |Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, both in Philadelphia and then at Yale |

| |and MIT. He returned to Pennsylvania in 1974 and continued to teach design until going to |

| |Carnegie-Mellon recently. In addition, he has been a visiting critic or lecturer at seventeen |

| |other architectural schools. |

| |His goals as head of an architectural school fall into two categories. The first is to pass on |

| |what he has learned through his practice--the nature of the pragmatic process for dealing with the|

| |power sources in the construction industry--namely the developers. The second is to work toward an|

| |architectural system that will increase the predictability of building performance before |

| |construction begins. |

| |As he has begun to share his professional experience with his new students, he has detected a |

| |preoccupation with the same high-style design--the New York Five and similar groups--that he has |

| |always refused to create. Naturally, it is much too early to say how that academic confrontation |

| |will be resolved. But as part of his goal of broadening student perceptions, Sauer hopes to send |

| |many graduates out into disciplines other than the traditional architectural practice. |

| |As for his second goal, the architectural system, Louis Sauer feels that his reputation as an |

| |artist-architect makes him an excellent advocate for strengthening the science of architecture. He|

| |believes that his prior work in behavioral science, for instance, has helped to stretch the |

| |measureable perception of "function'' (as in "Form follows... "). Thus, it has increased the |

| |potential predictability of an architect's work. |

| |A second future interest is the question of linking architecture to public policy, in recent |

| |years, he has been sent to several other countries by the United States Government as a technical |

| |assistance expert. He has been to Lebanon, Portugal and Russia to advise governments on the policy|

| |implications of design criteria. Especially the effect on disenfranchised members of the society. |

| |What has excited him most about these trips is the perspective they have given him on the problems|

| |and potential of American society. His intention is to work further on issues of public policy and|

| |architecture in developing countries. Despite many opportunities, Louis Sauer has not been |

| |attracted to circles of affluence up to now. The challenge to him is expediting housing in |

| |societies of poverty, where the need appears endless. |

| |Ultimately, Sauer is concerned about the future of his profession. Presently, under attack from |

| |several quarters (as are other professions) for what are called "exclusionary practices", American|

| |architects as a group are wondering just what their role for the future will be. Louis Sauer, |

| |however, is one who has no questions about that. To strengthen architectural skills; to work |

| |toward raising environmental quality; and most of all, to continue creating the "sense of place" |

| |in building which be sees as the architect's unique contribution: those are his goals for the |

| |future. |

| | |

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