Louis Edward Sauer was born on 1928 and 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.
30 Facts About Louis Sauer
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Louis Sauer was born to an Italian mother and a German father, both doctors in alternative medicine, with the family living modestly in Oak Park Illinois.
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Between the ages of ten and eighteen, Louis Sauer would go on to work a variety of part-time jobs: as a window washer, corner newspaper boy, life guard, magazine distributor, shoe salesman, among others.
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Louis Sauer discovered a passion for architecture and modern design while studying at Moholy-Nagy's 'New Bauhaus' from 1949 to 1953 in Chicago.
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Louis Sauer labelled himself conscientious objector, expressing his willingness to perform any tasks except those involving harm or killing, actions he wanted to avoid.
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Louis Sauer returned to the United States in 1955, where he obtained his first architectural employment under Jules Gregory in Lambertville NJ.
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Louis Sauer then joined the 1956 summer session of Congres International d'Architecture Moderne in Venice at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura spending a formative period studying under architects such as Giuseppe Samona, Jacob Bakema and Giancarlo De Carlo.
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Louis Sauer remained another six months in Venice before returning to America to work for the Philadelphia Planning Department under Edmund Bacon on the Society Hill Redevelopment Plan.
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Louis Sauer met Louis I Kahn and entered Kahn's Master's Studio for post-graduate architectural studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, graduating in 1959.
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Louis Sauer taught part-time throughout this period, architecture and urban design at Philadelphia's Drexel Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania.
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Louis 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.
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Between 1989 and 1997, Louis 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.
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Louis 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.
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Louis 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.
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Louis Sauer's design involved the blueprints for three high-rise buildings, resembling the Pei towers that stand there today.
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From 1962 to 1963, Louis Sauer conducted a thorough door-to-door survey to assess the execution of a redevelopment plan in the Morton Urban Renewal neighborhood.
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Louis Sauer was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at Carnegie-Mellon University.
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Louis Sauer's 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.
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Louis Sauer was a professor at the universities of Pennsylvania, Colorado and a visiting professor at MIT, Yale and at numerous other US and Canadian universities.
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In 1984 Louis Sauer was given the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Promoting Architectural Education.
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Louis Sauer's 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].
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Louis Sauer used water as a major theme to provide contrast been the summer and winter city and social landscapes.
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Louis Sauer was active in early initiatives to promote the inclusion of 'user needs' in design practice and education.
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Louis Sauer 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.
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Louis Sauer 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.
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Louis Sauer was active in the Environmental Design Research Association and was a director of its board.
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Louis Sauer was a review editor for the Journal of Architectural Research.
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In 1973 Louis Sauer was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and has received national, regional and local AIA awards, including two AIA Pennsylvania Chapter Silver Medals.
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Louis Sauer won six Progressive Architecture Design Award's for:.
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Louis Sauer has described building design as "extremely challenging" because he begins without any "preconceived form," allowing the structure to evolve naturally.