Louis Sauer

Who is Louis Sauer?

Louis Sauer, FAIA, 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.

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, Columbia and Montreal.

His innovations in low-rise high-density housing breathed new life into the previously maligned ‘row-housing’ form. Sauer's designs for the David Buten House Philadelphia in particular, and Pastorius Mews, were early templates for the system he developed. The conceptual innovation of most of these housing designs was a 12-foot-wide or 14-foot-wide structural and functional module, which was part of a grid.