Frei Otto in Film

John Hill

11. March 2015

Aviary in the Munich Zoo at Hellabrunn, 1979-1980 (Photo: Screenshot from "Frei Otto: Spanning the Future")

With the death of Frei Otto on Monday and the awarding of the 2015 Pritzker Architecture Prize to him on Tuesday, we take a look at a few short films on the German architect/engineer, his structures, and his working methods.

This seven-minute trailer for Frei Otto: Spanning the Future, a documentary produced for Colorado Public Television, gives some background on Otto and highlights a few notable structures:

This episode of "Great Moments in Science and Technology" focuses on Otto's most well known project (done with Günter Behnisch), the roof of Munich Olympic Stadium:

And finally here is a 1981 film (without sound) from the Institute for Lightweight Structures (IL, now ILEK) at the University of Stuttgart illustrating how Otto found inspiration in nature, particularly soap film: