"Primeval architecture is an architecture of necessity.
Nothing is there to excess, no matter whether
stone, clay, reeds or wood, animal skins or
hair are used. It is minimal. It can be very beautiful
even amidst poverty and is good in the ethical
sense.
Good architecture seems to be more important
than beautiful architecture. Beautiful architecture
is not necessarily good. Only buildings that are at
the same time ethically good and aesthetically
beautiful are worth preserving.
We have too many buildings that have become
useless and yet we still need new buildings, from
pole to pole, in the cold and in the heat.
Man's present areas of settlement are the new
ecological system in which technology is indispensable,
even in hot and cold areas. ...
Our age requires buildings that are lighter,
more energy-saving, more mobile and more
adaptable, in brief more natural, without disregarding
the need for safety and security.
This logically leads to the further development
of light constructions, to the building of tents,
shells, awnings and air-supported membranes.
It also leads to a new mobility and changeability.
A new understanding of nature is forming under
one aspect of high performance form (also called
'classical form'), which unites aesthetic and ethical
viewpoints.
Tomorrow's architecture will again be minimal
architecture, an architecture of the self-education
and self-optimization processes suggested by
human beings."
(Frei Otto and Bodo Rasch in their foreword
of this book.)
In 1992 the Bavarian branch of the Deutscher
Werkbund awarded its first prize to Frei Otto, undoubtedly
the most successful and many-sided
protagonist of modern light construction, and
with it a request to nominate a meritorious person
to whom the prize could be passed on, and
to design a joint exhibition with that person. Frei
Otto chose his pupil Bodo Rasch, who had realized
Otto's theories particularly in other cultures.
Otto died on 9 March 2015; he was to be publicly
announced as the winner of the 2015 Pritzker
Prize on 23 March, but his death meant the committee
announced his award on 10 March. Otto
himself had been told earlier that he had won
the prize by the executive director of the Pritzker
Prize, Martha Thorne. He was reported to have
said: "I have never done anything to gain this
prize. Prize winning is not the goal of my life.
I try to help poor people, but what shall I say
here - I am very happy."