Frei Otto

German architect Frei Otto (1925-2015) grew up in a family of sculptors, learned the craft and became interested in model building and gliding. A pilot in wartime, he was taken prisoner in France in 1945 and supervised a construction and maintenance team during his imprisonment. He studied at the Technische Universität in Berlin between 1948 and 1952. While travelling in the US he met Eero Sarinen and engineer Fred Severud, who were working on a suspended roof for Raleigh arena. “From that time on the study and construction of light-framed structures became the key theme of his studies” (Drieschner), and in 1954 he wrote his graduating thesis on the “suspended roof”. In 1957 he founded a workshop for light constructions in Berlin (which later became Institute-IL at Stuttgart Polytechnic), where he began a teaching career that he was to continue for thirty years (he is also an MIT visiting professor). Famous for his ....

Read more