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| |ideological or quasi-historical references represent a constriction of the choices available to |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