9 Buildings By Frei Otto, the Architect Who Engineered the Future

Frei Otto , architect behind some of the most authoritative structure and engineering ideas of the last century , has died just two workweek before hewas to receive the Pritzker Prize — the award that people often describe as the Nobel Prize for computer architecture .

Maybe you ’ve never heard of Otto . That ’s OK . He observe himself outside the ruffle of unhinged - far-famed architect that defines the 1990s and 2000s . But without him , many of the structure and buildings of the past 50 years would n’t exist . Because Otto was n’t just an designer — he was also a brilliant artificer and railroad engineer who pioneered some of the most far - fetched feats of morphological applied science ever nail .

The 1967 International and Universal Exposition or Expo 67 , 1967 , Montreal , Canada . Photos © Atelier Frei Otto Warmbronn .

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Otto was obsess with tensile social organisation — think the ceiling of a tent , where a small-arm of fabric hang between two points in tenseness , versus a cabin , where the beams are in compaction alternatively . And his obsession came from a very actual experience with tent - corresponding shelters : As a soldier during the 2d World War , he drop two days as a prisoner of war in France where he build all way of structures with anything he could regain laying around , asThe New York Timesrecountstoday . Though he had been apprenticedas a stone mason before the warfare , he came out of the experience possessed by the mind of building with less .

You could decipher his whole life history back to those two years spend in captivity — the next five decades were spent essay to build the best spaces with as little as potential , as the Pritzker panel delineate today . That often think using lightweight , cheap plastics or plexiglass strung between complex hardware frameworks to produce huge , light - filled bulk that could be well put together and disassembled .

Hall at the International Garden Exhibition , 1963 , Hamburg , Germany . Entrance Arch at the Federal Garden Exhibition , 1957 , Cologne , Germany . Photo © Atelier Frei Otto Warmbronn

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bubble . The wings of insect , bats , and birds . Spider webs . Trees . Otto ’s inquiry into experimental morphological engineering — often based on nature — was just as important as his construction , specially since many of his buildings were impermanent .

MIT published two volume of it in the sixties , packed with ideas about how tensile persuasiveness could be apply in architecture , frommembranes to pneumatics , each of which are now classics . His mind about cheap , light - step edifice made him a paladin to the progressive designer and inventors of the sixties and seventy ; the Whole Earth Catalogeven publish model of his oeuvre .

The most famous example of this — the one you ’ll see a lot today — is his cap for the Munich Olympic Park for the Summer Olympics in 1972 .

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Top two photos © Atelier Frei Otto Warmbronn ; Bottom photo vianils gore .

But the ghosts of the Third Reich influenced his workplace in other way , too . As the Pritzker Jury alludes to :

His computer architecture would always be a response to the heavy , columned buildings construct for a suppose eternity under the Third Reich in Germany . Otto ’s work , in direct contrast , was lightweight , open to nature , democratic , low - cost , and sometimes even temporary .

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It ’s a screw thread you’re able to find run through all of his body of work — a unmediated reaction to the presumptuous idea that any building is forever , or that architecture is a dick for doing harm .

Aviary in the Munich Zoo at Hellabrunn , 1979 - 1980 , Munich ( Hellabrunn ) , Germany . photograph © Atelier Frei Otto Warmbronn

Impermanence has emphatically been the case with Otto ’s workplace . In some example , photos are all that remain . But you may find his influence everywhere : From the NFL stadiums to Google , whose newly - harbinger complex is net with tensile netting that ’s directly inspired by Otto ’s work .

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But ina 2005 interview with Icon Eye , he left new architects with a little advice about the conflict between what you may build and what you should build :

“ Maybe you know that I was a close Quaker of Bucky Fuller , and we debated the idea of enceinte dome . But why should we work up very large spaces when they are not necessary ? We can build home which are two or three kilometer gamy and we can design halls spanning several km and covering a whole city but we have to ask what does it really make ? What does high society really need ? ”

So , yes — the employment passes away , as do the designer . But the ideas stick around , and in some font , take on lives of their own . you may read more about Otto over on the Pritzker site , and check out more picture below .

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