“My architectural drive was to design new types of buildings to help poor people, especially after natural disasters and catastrophes.
I will use whatever time is left for me to keep doing what I have been doing, which is to help humanity.
You have here a happy man.”
– Frei Otto on learning that he will receive the Pritzker Prize
He passed away a day before receiving the award.
Among numerous accolades, Frei Otto has been a recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Prize and Medal, two Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA), Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers London, Praemium Imperiale in Architecture and now, the highest of all, the Pritzker Prize.
Titan of Tensile Architecture, Otto pioneered advances in structural mathematics and civil engineering. He was a distinguished teacher and author. He founded the Institute for Lightweight Structures at the University of Stuttgart in 1964 and headed the institute until his retirement in 1991 when he was named emeritus professor.
Otto was a utopian who never stopped believing that architecture could make a better world for all. He practised sustainable architecture even before the term was coined, always taking inspiration from nature. He endeavoured to use minimum material and energy.
Otto never stopped experimenting, innovating and inventing. Not only did he create spaces, he also created knowledge. He pioneered modern fabric roofs over tensile structures.
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