Frei Otto, 2015 Pritzker Prize Winner: a life celebrating lightness in architecture

17 March 2015, 08:26 |

By Ongreening Team

Japan Paper Pavilion, Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany (in collaboration with Shigeru Ban)

German architect and engineer Frei Otto was chosen as the 40th recipient of the prestigious Pritzker Prize, the architecture's equivalent to the Nobel. Frei Otto, who died last week aged 89, was best known for pioneering the use of lightweight, sensational membrane and “floating” cable-net structures.

Taking inspiration from nature and the processes found there, he sought ways to use the least amount of materials and energy to enclose spaces. He practiced and advanced ideas of sustainability, even before the word was coined. He was inspired by natural phenomena – from birds’ skulls to soap bubbles and spiders’ webs. Frei Otto was awarded for "his visionary ideas, inquiring mind, belief in freely sharing knowledge and inventions, his collaborative spirit and concern for the careful use of resources," the prize jury announced.

Roofing for the Munich Olympic Park, 1968–1972, Munich, Germany (in collaboration with Gunther Behnisch)

“My architectural drive was to design new types of buildings to help poor people especially following natural disasters and catastrophes. So what shall be better for me than to win this prize? I will use whatever time is left to me to keep doing what I have been doing, which is to help humanity. You have here a happy man.” Otto said to the Executive Director of the Pritzker prize who travelled to Otto’s home and studio in Warmbronn, Germany, near Stuttgart, to deliver the news in person a couple of weeks before his passing.

He believed in making efficient, responsible use of materials, and that architecture should make a minimal impact on the environment. Frei Otto was a utopian who never stopped believing that architecture can make a better world for all. Frei Otto’s has influenced a whole generation of architects from all over the world, including Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Nicholas Grimshaw, Michael Hopkins, Günter Behnisch and many others.

Ongreening remembers Frei Otto with some of the best projects including the astonishing roofing structure designed for the Olympic Park in Munich in 1972 with his fellow Günter Behnisch. Each projects will be, then, explored in further detail throughout the week.